I think I am starting to get a handle on this combat system. Basically I need to Warpstrike, and then just hold down the defend trigger until I wrap back out of combat. And then spam tech gauge combos.
This YouTube channel has a series of videos that showcase the combat systems in depth: https://youtu.be/SgeklY4bF3E
I read this criticism of FFXIII recently that said its combat system had a lower floor to succeed than is required to enjoy. I don’t think that’s limited to just FFXIII though. I’d lump 12 & 15 in there too. That being said I did enjoy FFXV’s combat a lot as it became more proficient, and even more after watching that guy’s videos.
I didn't care for XV combat because it was like they tried to copy what The Witcher and other light action games like it, but did a worse job at it. At some point I just wanted to roll through the story and forget all about it. 💦
XV's combat was trash.
There's no tutorial, really, to explain how any of the combos work or flow. It's basically button mash and hope you figure it out. Like, none of the stuff in the video in the quote tree is described in the game.
Your AI companions are dumb as rocks, and die all the time.
The camera sucks, especially if you're in/around flora.
But the worst is that there's absolutely no crowd control. Which is why your companions always die. You focus fire on one enemy, but the rest swarm and the AI party members never do much about it. It's especially egregious because Gladio is ostensibly the tank, but he absolutely cannot grab and maintain aggro on packs. The end result is that too many enemies target other people who tend to be a lot more squishy. Which results in a chaotic mess every time.
The best thing to do is avoid as much combat as possible, stock up on magic for the boss fights, and nuke your way to victory. Anything else is just a frustrating slog and not worth the time.
Also, maybe it's me, but I don't want Final Fantasy to become an action title. I don't want to time animations and get locked into combos, or deal with iframes, or anything else along those lines. Final Fantasy is 100% worse off because of it, as XV proves.
There's no tutorial, really, to explain how any of the combos work or flow. It's basically button mash and hope you figure it out. Like, none of the stuff in the video in the quote tree is described in the game.
Your AI companions are dumb as rocks, and die all the time.
The camera sucks, especially if you're in/around flora.
No arguments here, though even before I watched those videos I had internalized a sort of flow between attacking and defending and using Warp Strike as needed, and that in and of itself was enjoyable for me. Certainly though the AI rarely enhanced my enjoyment of the game.
I don’t hold FFXV on any kind of pedestal. I enjoyed playing the game for about 30 hours just running around and fighting stuff, camping, listening to the banter, pimping out my car, and doing all that other random stuff that’s the meat of the game. Once I got to the story proper though I was incredibly disappointed with it and consequently the rest of the game as a whole. I don’t recommend any part of FFXV, not even the combat, nor do I think it’s a good example of an action RPG. So I can totally empathize with your experience. I wouldn’t say it’s universal, but certainly it’s a common one: which I why I think that criticism applies to it just as much as to FFXIII.
Also, maybe it's me, but I don't want Final Fantasy to become an action title. I don't want to time animations and get locked into combos, or deal with iframes, or anything else along those lines. Final Fantasy is 100% worse off because of it, as XV proves.
I think there’s something to be said about keeping the genre the same across the same title. Like, if The Legend of Zelda was suddenly a shooter, I don’t think I’d appreciate that. Not to say that Link’s Crossbow Adventure shouldn’t have been made, it was alright for what it was. Only that if it had been a mainline entry instead of an offshoot I think I might have had stronger feelings about it. That being said, FF games have trended away from turn-based and toward real-time combat for quite some time, and so they’re going for some sort of action/RPG hybrid and necking down that formula with each iteration. By all accounts so far FFVIIR is going to be the pinnacle of that hybrid.
The only thing I disagree with in your post is that the entire combat system was trash, and that it somehow proves that Final Fantasy games shouldn’t be action games. Like, don’t judge what FF can be off of what FFXV was.
There is a combat tutorial in 15, it’s just a menu option that’s not in the game proper. Which is a mistake imo
Like so many other things in the game.
I mean, if you're going to have a combo system, then maybe have a combo list that can be accessed at any time? So people can actually learn what does what without having to resort to trial and error?
And if you're going to have a real time party system, maybe make the other three AI characters actually be good at... something? And not make the player responsible for both telling these characters to focus on a single mob, and responsible for healing? XII had a robust system where party behavior was 100% predictable due to being able to program it yourself... why not have a version of that here? Because, despite outward appearances and a really weak/muddled skill system, the bros don't really fit into any kind of role outside of damage, which is just asinine in a party setting. Especially when they do fuck-all to mitigate damage coming to them. They either blindly attack what you're locked in on, or do their own random thing otherwise. I imagine I'd like it a lot more if:
Gladio was a real tank. High HP, high damage mitigation (which bosses and certain normal enemies can get around), crowd control, aggro.
Ignis was a support. Buffs/debuffs. Heals. Maybe one or two AoE attacks.
Prompto was... well about the same. Glass cannon DPS.
Noctis was about the same, being able to shift into any role as the situation required.
And then, have it so they behave predictably, either through a Gambit Lite scripting system, or simply good AI (see: Xenoblade). So when Ignis applies a debuff, it's something Prompto can exploit, etc.
I don’t hold FFXV on any kind of pedestal. I enjoyed playing the game for about 30 hours just running around and fighting stuff, camping, listening to the banter, pimping out my car, and doing all that other random stuff that’s the meat of the game. Once I got to the story proper though I was incredibly disappointed with it
I'm pretty amazed that this is the popular take by most of the people who played the game because I couldn't get out of the road trip portion of it fast enough. I never camped because I hated the camping system (why is EXP dependent on where/how you sleep? Why do I need to eat for buffs? Why isn't there anything fun to do at camp? It's such a time sink for no (for me) fun... an utterly worthless system). Obviously, I hated the combat. The car was obnoxiously slow and terrible to drive... 100% on rails, which negates the point of driving to begin with. Plus, it's the world's most notorious car, yet the bros still cruise around in it despite being hunted by the Empire.
Moreover, it's not until the 'open world' (I use the term loosely because there's nothing worth doing in this world) segment is over when Noctis finally begins to get some semblance of a personality. Until then, the entire experience is pointless. Things happen for essentially unknowable reasons, and with nearly 0 urgency. It might as well be a summer vacation.
I dearly hope that XVI is better across the board. Better characters, a better world, better systems (all of them). The only thing keeping me interested in the franchise is XIV. Even the VI Remake looks... tiresome. I got over my Cloud/Sephiroth phase a while ago. I'd much rather see an HD remake of V or VI, assuming a remake is inevitable.
And this makes me sad. I miss being excited for Final Fantasy. I grew up on it. IV was my first RPG way back in '91. VI remains on the short list of my all-time favorite games. But everything about XV has soured me on the franchise itself. The overly long development hell, and the POS that came out of it. It's hard to have faith that, by the time they actually get to a XVI, it won't be a very pretty mess. And that I'll be 50 years old.
I played 15 for like 30 minutes and thought the combat was completely terrible. The camera sucked, targeting sucked, it didn't feel interesting. At least 7 was snappy, 8 you could at least do the gunblade, 9 had interesting characters, all the 2d ones just worked because it was basically turn based and everything was pretty clear and quick.
The only FF with real time combat I've truly enjoyed was XIV.
I found the combat in XIV to be as boringly unmemorable as every other MMORPG I've ever played. Which isn't really that harsh a criticism of it, being a MMORPG, it just means it wasn't actually fun for me either. "Spam attack, wait for cooldown timer, spam attack again." Maybe it gets better after investing a few dozen hours into it, which I definitely did not do. Or maybe you just acclimate to it. I've heard it "slow" at first--I didn't think it was? Just boring for very predictable reasons.
I did not play the game before the relaunch. But considering it was described as "total crap but with some good visuals," I'm going to assume the earlier combat was also total crap.
Action-RPG combat can always be distilled down to ‘extremely easy/unengaging, but looks super cool’ and FF15 definitely fits that criteria. I doubt FF7R will be any different when you really get down to it.
And that’s fine with me, honestly. I play RPGs mostly for the story, so aside from a few exceptions, I don’t really want a lot of gameplay walls between me and the narrative. Having actual combat instead of turn-based menus makes it more interesting at least, and gives me the option of filling that combat sections with more spectacle.
Looks like they have new added shots where they try and sell the idea that the planet is dying thanks to the mako reactors.
It also makes sense now why Aerith being a flower girl is special. At least, it never occurred to me.
it was pretty clear to me back in the day, the gardens in the church and around aeris' house were literally the only places in midgar with any plant life, it was quite striking to me.
BahamutZERO on
+6
Options
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Looks like they have new added shots where they try and sell the idea that the planet is dying thanks to the mako reactors.
It also makes sense now why Aerith being a flower girl is special. At least, it never occurred to me.
it was pretty clear to me back in the day, the gardens in the church and around aeris' house were literally the only places in midgar with any plant life, it was quite striking to me.
I knew those places were special and also Aerith, but I didn't connect it to Mako.
+4
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Looks like they have new added shots where they try and sell the idea that the planet is dying thanks to the mako reactors.
It also makes sense now why Aerith being a flower girl is special. At least, it never occurred to me.
it was pretty clear to me back in the day, the gardens in the church and around aeris' house were literally the only places in midgar with any plant life, it was quite striking to me.
I could swear that Cloud and at least a couple other character remark that they didn't know you could grow anything in the city. Even the Turks are hesitant to mess up the flowers in the church. And between the music and the lighting, it would've been pretty hard to have a more on-the-nose visual cue that the church and Aerith's home are special places compared to the rest of the city.
I think I am starting to get a handle on this combat system. Basically I need to Warpstrike, and then just hold down the defend trigger until I wrap back out of combat. And then spam tech gauge combos.
This YouTube channel has a series of videos that showcase the combat systems in depth: https://youtu.be/SgeklY4bF3E
I read this criticism of FFXIII recently that said its combat system had a lower floor to succeed than is required to enjoy. I don’t think that’s limited to just FFXIII though. I’d lump 12 & 15 in there too. That being said I did enjoy FFXV’s combat a lot as it became more proficient, and even more after watching that guy’s videos.
I'm not sure if that's saying XIII's combat was too easy but if it is, I know someone who would cry hearing that.
I think they're saying that you can get through the game without engaging with it in an interesting way.
Which is very believable, lots of games have lower difficulty levels that don't require you to engage with the systems fully.
For most fights it's the difference between finishing it in 2 minutes vs 10 seconds. Technically doesn't matter, especially if you don't care either way. But it's still there.
And then there are the super fights and even the cie'th fights if you want 5 stars on them, which absolutely require you to engage with the whole paradigm shifting mechanic.
Yeah the latter cieths and the fucking Adamantoise required robust saboteurs and loads of shifts. I much prefer the crystarium/dressphere hybrid system from Lightning Returns. The story was completely batshit, but the combat was fun as hell.
At what point though do those enemies show up? 30 hours in? 40 hours in? I mean, FFXIII’s combat system doesn’t even kick in until you’ve been playing for 4 hours. Sekiro requires you to be fluent in it’s gameplay at about the 3-4 hour mark (if you’re dying a lot and doing a 20-hour playthrough). Maybe earlier if you take on Lady Butterfly before Genichiro. X-COM will take your lunch money in the first mission if you don’t understand the core gameplay.
I don’t want to keep punching down on FFXIII, because ultimately I do agree that it has a good story and characters and while I don’t enjoy the gameplay I understand that has some serious depth to it that ties directly into the narrative themes of the game. My number 1 complaint whenever I talk about FFXIII is in the presentation and pacing of these systems: If I’m at 20 hours and not yet experiencing any enjoyment from the game because it’s too simple to playthrough and not straightforward enough about its depth than that’s a considerable design flaw.
Those examples aren't in the same genre. Masacore action games and tactical games with permadeath are targeting a fundamentally different audience than Final Fantasy. They weren't developed with the idea that every console owner was a possible customer. Plus, different genres have different conventions; it's common for the first dozen hours of a JRPG to be pretty lightweight. Sure, it's a long game. Especially if the player doesn't engage with the mechanics, letting ten second fights drag on into two minute ones. The game gives feedback about this with battle ratings and par times. It seems unlikely to me that someone who loves the depth of a game like XCOM wouldn't dig into the systems in XIII, especially if they weren't hitting par times with their approach.
But yes, the player absolutely have to engage with the systems eventually. I want to say there are bosses as early as 20 hours which will pose a stiff challenge if the player hasn't been paying attention to par times.
Well the argument goes as such: FFXIII’s gameplay has a lower skill floor to succeed than to enjoy. The rebuttal is that you eventually run into obstacles that require you to learn the combat system in depth, and the implicit assumption behind that is that someone who understands the systems in depth would also enjoy them. To which I replied that those obstacles arrive too late in the game, and that a game that doesn’t require you to learn its systems by 20 hours has a considerable design flaw.
I disagree that we can’t use other genres as examples because fundamentally all games should introduce their systems at a pace that is slow enough to not overwhelm the player but fast enough to keep their attention. More complex games will naturally have a longer learning curve, but FFXIII doesn’t even give you your first paradigm options until what, 2 hours? 4 hours? I forget, but hours is too long of a time to wait before introducing your core gameplay much less waiting 20 hours to reach the point were you can start to engage with it fully (I.e. the ability to swap out party members and fully customize your paradigms). If you want a example that’s an RPG than I’ll offer Octopath were you’re core gameplay is unlocked in the first battle, and you can reach the maximum customization offered in the game by the 12-14 hour point. If you want an action RPG example than Kingdom Hearts teaches everything you need to know about melee combat and exploration before you leave the tutorial zone, and I think you’ve got all your spells unlocked by the end of the first zone.
And while I’m on the topic I personally don’t find FFXIII’s gameplay particularly engaging even when it is unlocked. The concept of filling up the break bar with COM+RAV+RAV isn’t super difficult, and I think the game just gives that to you right? If learning how to swap between that and triple RAV until broken and then into more COMs is what’s separating those who get it from those who don’t, then I don’t think there’s a lot of depth there. Most of the time when I hear about the depth of FFXIII it’s regarding less obvious mechanics like the action bar reset you get after two paradigm shifts and things like that, but my understanding is that level of depth never required to beat the game.
Now I totally get that how much a person enjoys a particular kind of gameplay is up to their personal tastes: Nightslyr doesn’t like FFXV’s combat but I did and I think we both had the same level of engagement with it. I think we can objectively look at FFXV’s combat system and point out it’s faults: games can have flaws and still be enjoyable. FFXIII is an RPG that requires you to make fast and simple decisions every 3-5 seconds, and in that respect not terribly different than previous ATB FF games. The break system is novel, but not incredibly complex, and not difficult to understand or overcome. However compared to previous FF games the gameplay gives you the appearance of less control and opportunity for engaging gameplay. Moreover, I think the most interesting decisions you make are in designing your paradigms which you can’t do while in battle. Finally the rewards from battle are negligible for the first 20+ hours of the game and how your rating is determined* isn’t immediately obvious nor are the benefits from it straightforward.
Honestly, when the thread says that FFXIII’s combat system has a lot of depth and is really fantastic once you get it I’m giving you all the benefit of the doubt. In my mind, manipulating the turn sequencing in FFX had way more depth and engagement than anything I did in XIII.
*I’m going to caveat this specifically to head off another post clarifying this. Yes I know that the faster you clear a battle the better, what’s not obvious is what are the break times between those stars. Why does a 15s fight with 3 enemies sometimes give me 4 stars and a 30s fight with 2 sometimes give me 5 stars? It seems largely arbitrary, and until you unlock the ability to customize your party you’re kinda stuck with whatever you can manage to put together for that specific pack. Finally, while over time you get more rewards with higher ratings, battle by battle there’s too much variance with regard to rating and reward.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
0
Options
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
The way I handle RPGS that are deep but easy is I purposely gimp myself. Lower levels, choosing equipment to give each character distinct weaknesses etc. It usually works though maybe not as much in recent games that kind of railroad progression.
The original FF7 was a great game to do this on. A low level run means you kind of HAVE to be super choosy on your materia, because you might not even get the second spell on each on till late game. I really heavily made each char have distinct roles and weaknesses and it made each boss fight involve me adjust parties till I could get through it. Was a fun time.
The only FF with real time combat I've truly enjoyed was XIV.
I found the combat in XIV to be as boringly unmemorable as every other MMORPG I've ever played. Which isn't really that harsh a criticism of it, being a MMORPG, it just means it wasn't actually fun for me either. "Spam attack, wait for cooldown timer, spam attack again." Maybe it gets better after investing a few dozen hours into it, which I definitely did not do. Or maybe you just acclimate to it. I've heard it "slow" at first--I didn't think it was? Just boring for very predictable reasons.
I did not play the game before the relaunch. But considering it was described as "total crap but with some good visuals," I'm going to assume the earlier combat was also total crap.
It definitely is pretty much standard MMO style combat, but with a slower global cooldown. If that's not a thing you like in general, then it won't really stand out.
The thing I liked about it was the slower GCD made things much more deliberate. You had more time to think instead of hammering cooldowns. And as you leveled you gained many more skills, many of which were short cooldowns off the GCD, so you were always doing something and squeezing in abilities.
I mained bard, so it was a little different for other classes, but in general I kept busy, between maintaining my crit self buff, and 2 DoTs on the enemy while watching for skills that get reset by DoT crits.
Also the boss fights were really well designed, with very clear tells for nearly everything.
Not exactly. What I am saying is that you can beat FFXV by simply holding down the attack button with the sword and nothing else. Sure you're going to die a lot, but eventually you'll outlevel most of the content and learn to run from anything that you don't, and that's a very boring and terrible way to play.
I feel like this describes just about every jrpg, so I don't know that this is a meaningful complaint.
+8
Options
AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Still working on my first playthrough of FFXV. Only a handful of gripes so far.
1. The fucking camera keeps getting stuck behind random foliage in battle. Can't see what the fuck I'm doing half the time.
2. The 3 bros basically do nothing. I've been sorta treating it more like it's just Noctis out by himself, and occasionally I can summon Gladio for an AOE attack or Ignis for a heal. I would love a XII style gambit system where I could essentially program their behavior and give them actual roles. As it is I find I'm happier pretending they don't exist. I haven't really had problems with them getting themselves killed yet either.
3. The day/night cycle goes way too fast. It's annoying to constantly have to high tail it for camp so you don't get stomped by high level demons.
The lack of depth in the combat doesn't really bother me. You could hold attack and burn through potions until you win, but that would be boring so I don't do that. Instead I focus on getting link-strikes and parries, and not taking damage, trying to get a high grade in battle. I think the combat system would be more interesting with simple tweaks. Less MP so you are forced to manage it, make dodging eat MP (maybe it does? If so it should eat more MP because I haven't noticed it), death when you hit 0 HP instead of being able to heal out of it, no auto-healing because you hid behind a rock or whatever, and more focus on buffs/debuffs and status effects. Basically make it so you can't just ignore the combat mechanics and hold circle to win.
Not exactly. What I am saying is that you can beat FFXV by simply holding down the attack button with the sword and nothing else. Sure you're going to die a lot, but eventually you'll outlevel most of the content and learn to run from anything that you don't, and that's a very boring and terrible way to play.
I feel like this describes just about every jrpg, so I don't know that this is a meaningful complaint.
Yeah, there's a difference between just powering through it and being good at it.
The fact that I has taking on hunts that the game said were way out of my league suggests that I managed to get a bit better at it.
And just going for force tends to run up to a point where you might succeed, but it won't look good.
In FFXIII, I was doing fine up to Pope Four Face (I forget his name, but you know who I mean), but that fight took like 40 minutes to whittle him down. I have to assume there was an approach I didn't think to use.
The annoying thing about FFXV is that it seems like the game plays you rather you playing it. It is really demanding on time. The scale of the world and having to camp is a real drain.
13's combat is great fairly early on if you're consistently aiming for speed / 5 stars. If you focus on safely winning then I could see it being a bland chore.
Never thought I'd see Breath of the Wild on a list for mechanical excellence, though. It's my least favorite Zelda mechanically by a wide mile and one of the most poorly balanced games I've ever played. You can sleepwalk through practically every boss battle and any enemy that doesn't one-shot you (and then handle those in a way that's a lot like cheesing a vanilla Elder Scrolls game).
7 looks like the most interesting combat thus far, though. I have fantasized (lol) about an action battle system with pause menus since Fallout 3. I can't believe I'm getting it, with FF7, almost exactly how I dreamed of it being!
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
13's combat is great fairly early on if you're consistently aiming for speed / 5 stars. If you focus on safely winning then I could see it being a bland chore.
Never thought I'd see Breath of the Wild on a list for mechanical excellence, though. It's my least favorite Zelda mechanically by a wide mile and one of the most poorly balanced games I've ever played. You can sleepwalk through practically every boss battle and any enemy that doesn't one-shot you (and then handle those in a way that's a lot like cheesing a vanilla Elder Scrolls game).
7 looks like the most interesting combat thus far, though. I have fantasized (lol) about an action battle system with pause menus since Fallout 3. I can't believe I'm getting it, with FF7, almost exactly how I dreamed of it being!
The criteria of my list was simply games where I enjoyed the combat system, not necessarily that they were deep, though often the two are related. Hollow Knight is also there and the gameplay, while tight, isn't super deep either. FFXV was on there too, and I wholly agree its gameplay is deeply flawed. The purpose of writing that out was mostly to reflect on what I find enjoyable, and for action games something that rewards precisely timed defense seems to rate high for me. For BotW, I found the parry and dodge mechanic deeply satisfying, and also I enjoyed the environmental interactions and learning to manage large groups of enemies. I agree with you though that the boss battles in particular weren't as satisfying as previous Zelda games which required you to apply some new mechanic in a novel way, and also toward the later half of the game enemy damage and HP out scaled the environmental damage in such a way as to make it wholly negligible. I actually wrote those same critiques down when I hopped into the Zelda thread many moons ago to talk about the game.
I hold your opinion on games and mechanics in high regard, so I'm willing to concede that FFXIII has good gameplay, I just didn't find it so. Swapping between 2-3 paradigms and hitting auto-battle because it was the right choice 99% of the time just never felt rewarding in the same way that switching between offense and defense with liberal usage of warp strike did in FFXV, or timing my buffs/debuffs and boost mode on a stunned enemy in Octopath did. Certainly there are plenty who've expressed the exact opposite in this thread, but on the other hand I'm hardly alone in my opinion. In the same way that people complained about the Gambit system in FFXII, I think the majority of players find a lot of enjoyment in the direct interaction between pushing a button and their character(s) doing something. But I have no idea where I would even start looking into anything approaching an academic answer as to if that's true or not.
Not exactly. What I am saying is that you can beat FFXV by simply holding down the attack button with the sword and nothing else. Sure you're going to die a lot, but eventually you'll outlevel most of the content and learn to run from anything that you don't, and that's a very boring and terrible way to play.
I feel like this describes just about every jrpg, so I don't know that this is a meaningful complaint.
Well, FFXV is an action RPG; specifically it uses the framework of an action game for its combat. How many action games would you say allow you to win most fights by holding down a single button but also have deeply rewarding gameplay? Also, I'd argue that any JRPGs not having an engaging and rewarding combat system in the year of our lord 2020 would garner a meaningful complaint.
Damn, the corridor between Evrae Altana and Seymour is an absurd jump in difficulty from anything before. Fantastic AP though and 2 save points makes grinding nice
Damn, the corridor between Evrae Altana and Seymour is an absurd jump in difficulty from anything before. Fantastic AP though and 2 save points makes grinding nice
Grinding for an hour or two there will basically set you up for the entire rest of the game.
Zelda does at least consistently get right the user feel from button inputs. That's something I didn't get at all from any of the XV demos, or from their other action titles like Type0. I feel 7R will probably be the same, but since most of the impactful stuff will be from the slow motion menus, I'm hoping it won't detract much.
Dark Souls and Monster Hunter have put the bar so high for action RPGs that decent isn't really good enough anymore. But there's still lots of room for interesting hybrid systems.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
+2
Options
KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I watched Max react to the FFVIIR with tears in his eyes. This game means so much to him and I hope it's great, but all signs so far point to it being so.
...
And while I’m on the topic I personally don’t find FFXIII’s gameplay particularly engaging even when it is unlocked. The concept of filling up the break bar with COM+RAV+RAV isn’t super difficult, and I think the game just gives that to you right? If learning how to swap between that and triple RAV until broken and then into more COMs is what’s separating those who get it from those who don’t, then I don’t think there’s a lot of depth there. Most of the time when I hear about the depth of FFXIII it’s regarding less obvious mechanics like the action bar reset you get after two paradigm shifts and things like that, but my understanding is that level of depth never required to beat the game.
..
No, it really is. Maybe it takes too long to get there? Maybe the game doesn't expose those systems well enough? But if you don't discover and engage with those systems you probably won't be able to beat the game. The 20 hour boss is kinda challenging. The midpoint has a rude awakening that took me a few attempts as well. But I found late game to be quite challenging and hit several walls.
Zelda does at least consistently get right the user feel from button inputs. That's something I didn't get at all from any of the XV demos, or from their other action titles like Type0. I feel 7R will probably be the same, but since most of the impactful stuff will be from the slow motion menus, I'm hoping it won't detract much.
Dark Souls and Monster Hunter have put the bar so high for action RPGs that decent isn't really good enough anymore. But there's still lots of room for interesting hybrid systems.
Type-0 actually reminds me a lot of Monster Hunter gameplay circa five or six years ago. There've been some huge improvements since then, to be sure.
Every time the music swells when the logo appears on the pan out shot of Midgar I get the stupidest grin on my face.
I definitely need a framed poster of Midgar.
My computer startup sound in college was that music from the point the camera is panning out to the crescendo and trail off. Back then my desktop icons, background and start menu usually loaded right as the crescendo hit.
RE: XIV - it's really not a game that you can diagnose before getting pretty far into it. None of the Jobs' kits are completed until the endgame, and their flows completely change every 10-15 character levels.
Right now I'm leveling Summoner, which is the game's DPS pet/damage over time (DoT) class. I'm at level 64. Level 80 is the current cap. I currently have to:
Keep track of my DoTs and ensure 100% uptime for every encounter
Spread my DoTs to other enemies if I'm dealing with a pack (Bane)
Summon 1 of 3 pets depending on the kind of engagement (packs vs. single boss vs. solo questing)
Use my pet abilities off cooldown... For Ifrit, his attacks have more potency than my own spammable spell
Obtain Aetherflow charges, and use either Fester (with all DoTs up for max damage) on a single enemy or Painflare as an AoE
Use Dreadwyrm Stance whenever it's off cooldown to shorten spell casting cooldowns, reset TriDisaster (spell that applies all my DoTs at once), and gain access to Deathflare
At level 70, I'll have temporary access to Bahamut, which can only be summoned (initially) after 2 Dreadwyrm Stance windows have been completed. Bahamut is his own window in which you need to manage his most powerful attack in the midst of doing everything else.
At level 80, I'll have temporary access to Phoenix, which can only be summoned after Bahamut, and operates differently than him.
All of this while handling mechanics (as a caster, you generally have to stand still to cast spells... while you do have instant casts, they're lower potency, and using too many is a DPS loss).
At this point, I'm hitting a button about every half second, according to a mixture of priority (are my DoTs up? if so, what's my most powerful option that's off cooldown?) and mechanics (do I need to move? is this an add phase? do I need to turn around and stop targeting (XIV loves its gaze attacks)?). Because of the mix of abilities that are off the global cooldown, it's anything but slow. It's now essentially a rhythm game, one that plays differently according to what the enemies are doing, as well as your own party.
IMO, it's definitely worth checking out. Admittedly, the first 50 character levels are somewhat rough due to a combination of it being a brand new game made incredibly quickly after 1.0's debacle, the lack of kit I mentioned above, and the story largely being the prologue to what comes. If you can get past that, you'll experience a pretty damn special game that's a living, breathing love letter to the entire series. A game that takes disparate elements from FF III, FF VII, FF XII, Tactics, etc. and combines them intelligently and believably while keeping true to its own unique setting as well. A game with incredible moments, legit "Holy Shit!" moments, and, at times, moments that are incredibly personal. It also has some amazing music.
It's the best MMO out there, IMO. It makes World of Warcraft look like a steaming pile of shit. And it's also a damn good Final Fantasy game in its own right. It feels like a return to the late 90s/early 2000s. And the latest expansion - Shadowbringers - is haunting. XV wishes its world of darkness was half as creepy as XIV's world of light.
It's the only thing keeping my hope for the franchise alive. I hope Yoshi-P is rewarded with his own offline main series game, because he's definitely earned it.
one problem with successful live service games like MMOs is their developers end up shackled to them forever, I can't imagine YoshiP getting to move on from it to something like an FF16 while it's still increasing in popularity.
Not exactly. What I am saying is that you can beat FFXV by simply holding down the attack button with the sword and nothing else. Sure you're going to die a lot, but eventually you'll outlevel most of the content and learn to run from anything that you don't, and that's a very boring and terrible way to play.
I feel like this describes just about every jrpg, so I don't know that this is a meaningful complaint.
Well, FFXV is an action RPG; specifically it uses the framework of an action game for its combat. How many action games would you say allow you to win most fights by holding down a single button but also have deeply rewarding gameplay? Also, I'd argue that any JRPGs not having an engaging and rewarding combat system in the year of our lord 2020 would garner a meaningful complaint.
Skyrim? Any Diablo-clone? Assassin's Creed?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Posts
XV's combat was trash.
There's no tutorial, really, to explain how any of the combos work or flow. It's basically button mash and hope you figure it out. Like, none of the stuff in the video in the quote tree is described in the game.
Your AI companions are dumb as rocks, and die all the time.
The camera sucks, especially if you're in/around flora.
But the worst is that there's absolutely no crowd control. Which is why your companions always die. You focus fire on one enemy, but the rest swarm and the AI party members never do much about it. It's especially egregious because Gladio is ostensibly the tank, but he absolutely cannot grab and maintain aggro on packs. The end result is that too many enemies target other people who tend to be a lot more squishy. Which results in a chaotic mess every time.
The best thing to do is avoid as much combat as possible, stock up on magic for the boss fights, and nuke your way to victory. Anything else is just a frustrating slog and not worth the time.
Also, maybe it's me, but I don't want Final Fantasy to become an action title. I don't want to time animations and get locked into combos, or deal with iframes, or anything else along those lines. Final Fantasy is 100% worse off because of it, as XV proves.
No arguments here, though even before I watched those videos I had internalized a sort of flow between attacking and defending and using Warp Strike as needed, and that in and of itself was enjoyable for me. Certainly though the AI rarely enhanced my enjoyment of the game.
I don’t hold FFXV on any kind of pedestal. I enjoyed playing the game for about 30 hours just running around and fighting stuff, camping, listening to the banter, pimping out my car, and doing all that other random stuff that’s the meat of the game. Once I got to the story proper though I was incredibly disappointed with it and consequently the rest of the game as a whole. I don’t recommend any part of FFXV, not even the combat, nor do I think it’s a good example of an action RPG. So I can totally empathize with your experience. I wouldn’t say it’s universal, but certainly it’s a common one: which I why I think that criticism applies to it just as much as to FFXIII.
I think there’s something to be said about keeping the genre the same across the same title. Like, if The Legend of Zelda was suddenly a shooter, I don’t think I’d appreciate that. Not to say that Link’s Crossbow Adventure shouldn’t have been made, it was alright for what it was. Only that if it had been a mainline entry instead of an offshoot I think I might have had stronger feelings about it. That being said, FF games have trended away from turn-based and toward real-time combat for quite some time, and so they’re going for some sort of action/RPG hybrid and necking down that formula with each iteration. By all accounts so far FFVIIR is going to be the pinnacle of that hybrid.
The only thing I disagree with in your post is that the entire combat system was trash, and that it somehow proves that Final Fantasy games shouldn’t be action games. Like, don’t judge what FF can be off of what FFXV was.
Like so many other things in the game.
I mean, if you're going to have a combo system, then maybe have a combo list that can be accessed at any time? So people can actually learn what does what without having to resort to trial and error?
And if you're going to have a real time party system, maybe make the other three AI characters actually be good at... something? And not make the player responsible for both telling these characters to focus on a single mob, and responsible for healing? XII had a robust system where party behavior was 100% predictable due to being able to program it yourself... why not have a version of that here? Because, despite outward appearances and a really weak/muddled skill system, the bros don't really fit into any kind of role outside of damage, which is just asinine in a party setting. Especially when they do fuck-all to mitigate damage coming to them. They either blindly attack what you're locked in on, or do their own random thing otherwise. I imagine I'd like it a lot more if:
Gladio was a real tank. High HP, high damage mitigation (which bosses and certain normal enemies can get around), crowd control, aggro.
Ignis was a support. Buffs/debuffs. Heals. Maybe one or two AoE attacks.
Prompto was... well about the same. Glass cannon DPS.
Noctis was about the same, being able to shift into any role as the situation required.
And then, have it so they behave predictably, either through a Gambit Lite scripting system, or simply good AI (see: Xenoblade). So when Ignis applies a debuff, it's something Prompto can exploit, etc.
I'm pretty amazed that this is the popular take by most of the people who played the game because I couldn't get out of the road trip portion of it fast enough. I never camped because I hated the camping system (why is EXP dependent on where/how you sleep? Why do I need to eat for buffs? Why isn't there anything fun to do at camp? It's such a time sink for no (for me) fun... an utterly worthless system). Obviously, I hated the combat. The car was obnoxiously slow and terrible to drive... 100% on rails, which negates the point of driving to begin with. Plus, it's the world's most notorious car, yet the bros still cruise around in it despite being hunted by the Empire.
Moreover, it's not until the 'open world' (I use the term loosely because there's nothing worth doing in this world) segment is over when Noctis finally begins to get some semblance of a personality. Until then, the entire experience is pointless. Things happen for essentially unknowable reasons, and with nearly 0 urgency. It might as well be a summer vacation.
I dearly hope that XVI is better across the board. Better characters, a better world, better systems (all of them). The only thing keeping me interested in the franchise is XIV. Even the VI Remake looks... tiresome. I got over my Cloud/Sephiroth phase a while ago. I'd much rather see an HD remake of V or VI, assuming a remake is inevitable.
And this makes me sad. I miss being excited for Final Fantasy. I grew up on it. IV was my first RPG way back in '91. VI remains on the short list of my all-time favorite games. But everything about XV has soured me on the franchise itself. The overly long development hell, and the POS that came out of it. It's hard to have faith that, by the time they actually get to a XVI, it won't be a very pretty mess. And that I'll be 50 years old.
It also makes sense now why Aerith being a flower girl is special. At least, it never occurred to me.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I found the combat in XIV to be as boringly unmemorable as every other MMORPG I've ever played. Which isn't really that harsh a criticism of it, being a MMORPG, it just means it wasn't actually fun for me either. "Spam attack, wait for cooldown timer, spam attack again." Maybe it gets better after investing a few dozen hours into it, which I definitely did not do. Or maybe you just acclimate to it. I've heard it "slow" at first--I didn't think it was? Just boring for very predictable reasons.
I did not play the game before the relaunch. But considering it was described as "total crap but with some good visuals," I'm going to assume the earlier combat was also total crap.
And that’s fine with me, honestly. I play RPGs mostly for the story, so aside from a few exceptions, I don’t really want a lot of gameplay walls between me and the narrative. Having actual combat instead of turn-based menus makes it more interesting at least, and gives me the option of filling that combat sections with more spectacle.
it was pretty clear to me back in the day, the gardens in the church and around aeris' house were literally the only places in midgar with any plant life, it was quite striking to me.
I knew those places were special and also Aerith, but I didn't connect it to Mako.
I could swear that Cloud and at least a couple other character remark that they didn't know you could grow anything in the city. Even the Turks are hesitant to mess up the flowers in the church. And between the music and the lighting, it would've been pretty hard to have a more on-the-nose visual cue that the church and Aerith's home are special places compared to the rest of the city.
Those examples aren't in the same genre. Masacore action games and tactical games with permadeath are targeting a fundamentally different audience than Final Fantasy. They weren't developed with the idea that every console owner was a possible customer. Plus, different genres have different conventions; it's common for the first dozen hours of a JRPG to be pretty lightweight. Sure, it's a long game. Especially if the player doesn't engage with the mechanics, letting ten second fights drag on into two minute ones. The game gives feedback about this with battle ratings and par times. It seems unlikely to me that someone who loves the depth of a game like XCOM wouldn't dig into the systems in XIII, especially if they weren't hitting par times with their approach.
But yes, the player absolutely have to engage with the systems eventually. I want to say there are bosses as early as 20 hours which will pose a stiff challenge if the player hasn't been paying attention to par times.
I disagree that we can’t use other genres as examples because fundamentally all games should introduce their systems at a pace that is slow enough to not overwhelm the player but fast enough to keep their attention. More complex games will naturally have a longer learning curve, but FFXIII doesn’t even give you your first paradigm options until what, 2 hours? 4 hours? I forget, but hours is too long of a time to wait before introducing your core gameplay much less waiting 20 hours to reach the point were you can start to engage with it fully (I.e. the ability to swap out party members and fully customize your paradigms). If you want a example that’s an RPG than I’ll offer Octopath were you’re core gameplay is unlocked in the first battle, and you can reach the maximum customization offered in the game by the 12-14 hour point. If you want an action RPG example than Kingdom Hearts teaches everything you need to know about melee combat and exploration before you leave the tutorial zone, and I think you’ve got all your spells unlocked by the end of the first zone.
And while I’m on the topic I personally don’t find FFXIII’s gameplay particularly engaging even when it is unlocked. The concept of filling up the break bar with COM+RAV+RAV isn’t super difficult, and I think the game just gives that to you right? If learning how to swap between that and triple RAV until broken and then into more COMs is what’s separating those who get it from those who don’t, then I don’t think there’s a lot of depth there. Most of the time when I hear about the depth of FFXIII it’s regarding less obvious mechanics like the action bar reset you get after two paradigm shifts and things like that, but my understanding is that level of depth never required to beat the game.
Now I totally get that how much a person enjoys a particular kind of gameplay is up to their personal tastes: Nightslyr doesn’t like FFXV’s combat but I did and I think we both had the same level of engagement with it. I think we can objectively look at FFXV’s combat system and point out it’s faults: games can have flaws and still be enjoyable. FFXIII is an RPG that requires you to make fast and simple decisions every 3-5 seconds, and in that respect not terribly different than previous ATB FF games. The break system is novel, but not incredibly complex, and not difficult to understand or overcome. However compared to previous FF games the gameplay gives you the appearance of less control and opportunity for engaging gameplay. Moreover, I think the most interesting decisions you make are in designing your paradigms which you can’t do while in battle. Finally the rewards from battle are negligible for the first 20+ hours of the game and how your rating is determined* isn’t immediately obvious nor are the benefits from it straightforward.
Honestly, when the thread says that FFXIII’s combat system has a lot of depth and is really fantastic once you get it I’m giving you all the benefit of the doubt. In my mind, manipulating the turn sequencing in FFX had way more depth and engagement than anything I did in XIII.
*I’m going to caveat this specifically to head off another post clarifying this. Yes I know that the faster you clear a battle the better, what’s not obvious is what are the break times between those stars. Why does a 15s fight with 3 enemies sometimes give me 4 stars and a 30s fight with 2 sometimes give me 5 stars? It seems largely arbitrary, and until you unlock the ability to customize your party you’re kinda stuck with whatever you can manage to put together for that specific pack. Finally, while over time you get more rewards with higher ratings, battle by battle there’s too much variance with regard to rating and reward.
The original FF7 was a great game to do this on. A low level run means you kind of HAVE to be super choosy on your materia, because you might not even get the second spell on each on till late game. I really heavily made each char have distinct roles and weaknesses and it made each boss fight involve me adjust parties till I could get through it. Was a fun time.
It definitely is pretty much standard MMO style combat, but with a slower global cooldown. If that's not a thing you like in general, then it won't really stand out.
The thing I liked about it was the slower GCD made things much more deliberate. You had more time to think instead of hammering cooldowns. And as you leveled you gained many more skills, many of which were short cooldowns off the GCD, so you were always doing something and squeezing in abilities.
I mained bard, so it was a little different for other classes, but in general I kept busy, between maintaining my crit self buff, and 2 DoTs on the enemy while watching for skills that get reset by DoT crits.
Also the boss fights were really well designed, with very clear tells for nearly everything.
I feel like this describes just about every jrpg, so I don't know that this is a meaningful complaint.
1. The fucking camera keeps getting stuck behind random foliage in battle. Can't see what the fuck I'm doing half the time.
2. The 3 bros basically do nothing. I've been sorta treating it more like it's just Noctis out by himself, and occasionally I can summon Gladio for an AOE attack or Ignis for a heal. I would love a XII style gambit system where I could essentially program their behavior and give them actual roles. As it is I find I'm happier pretending they don't exist. I haven't really had problems with them getting themselves killed yet either.
3. The day/night cycle goes way too fast. It's annoying to constantly have to high tail it for camp so you don't get stomped by high level demons.
The lack of depth in the combat doesn't really bother me. You could hold attack and burn through potions until you win, but that would be boring so I don't do that. Instead I focus on getting link-strikes and parries, and not taking damage, trying to get a high grade in battle. I think the combat system would be more interesting with simple tweaks. Less MP so you are forced to manage it, make dodging eat MP (maybe it does? If so it should eat more MP because I haven't noticed it), death when you hit 0 HP instead of being able to heal out of it, no auto-healing because you hid behind a rock or whatever, and more focus on buffs/debuffs and status effects. Basically make it so you can't just ignore the combat mechanics and hold circle to win.
Oh and fix that fucking camera.
The fact that I has taking on hunts that the game said were way out of my league suggests that I managed to get a bit better at it.
And just going for force tends to run up to a point where you might succeed, but it won't look good.
In FFXIII, I was doing fine up to Pope Four Face (I forget his name, but you know who I mean), but that fight took like 40 minutes to whittle him down. I have to assume there was an approach I didn't think to use.
Never thought I'd see Breath of the Wild on a list for mechanical excellence, though. It's my least favorite Zelda mechanically by a wide mile and one of the most poorly balanced games I've ever played. You can sleepwalk through practically every boss battle and any enemy that doesn't one-shot you (and then handle those in a way that's a lot like cheesing a vanilla Elder Scrolls game).
7 looks like the most interesting combat thus far, though. I have fantasized (lol) about an action battle system with pause menus since Fallout 3. I can't believe I'm getting it, with FF7, almost exactly how I dreamed of it being!
For real though April 10 can't come soon enough.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
The criteria of my list was simply games where I enjoyed the combat system, not necessarily that they were deep, though often the two are related. Hollow Knight is also there and the gameplay, while tight, isn't super deep either. FFXV was on there too, and I wholly agree its gameplay is deeply flawed. The purpose of writing that out was mostly to reflect on what I find enjoyable, and for action games something that rewards precisely timed defense seems to rate high for me. For BotW, I found the parry and dodge mechanic deeply satisfying, and also I enjoyed the environmental interactions and learning to manage large groups of enemies. I agree with you though that the boss battles in particular weren't as satisfying as previous Zelda games which required you to apply some new mechanic in a novel way, and also toward the later half of the game enemy damage and HP out scaled the environmental damage in such a way as to make it wholly negligible. I actually wrote those same critiques down when I hopped into the Zelda thread many moons ago to talk about the game.
I hold your opinion on games and mechanics in high regard, so I'm willing to concede that FFXIII has good gameplay, I just didn't find it so. Swapping between 2-3 paradigms and hitting auto-battle because it was the right choice 99% of the time just never felt rewarding in the same way that switching between offense and defense with liberal usage of warp strike did in FFXV, or timing my buffs/debuffs and boost mode on a stunned enemy in Octopath did. Certainly there are plenty who've expressed the exact opposite in this thread, but on the other hand I'm hardly alone in my opinion. In the same way that people complained about the Gambit system in FFXII, I think the majority of players find a lot of enjoyment in the direct interaction between pushing a button and their character(s) doing something. But I have no idea where I would even start looking into anything approaching an academic answer as to if that's true or not.
Well, FFXV is an action RPG; specifically it uses the framework of an action game for its combat. How many action games would you say allow you to win most fights by holding down a single button but also have deeply rewarding gameplay? Also, I'd argue that any JRPGs not having an engaging and rewarding combat system in the year of our lord 2020 would garner a meaningful complaint.
Grinding for an hour or two there will basically set you up for the entire rest of the game.
Dark Souls and Monster Hunter have put the bar so high for action RPGs that decent isn't really good enough anymore. But there's still lots of room for interesting hybrid systems.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I definitely need a framed poster of Midgar.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
No, it really is. Maybe it takes too long to get there? Maybe the game doesn't expose those systems well enough? But if you don't discover and engage with those systems you probably won't be able to beat the game. The 20 hour boss is kinda challenging. The midpoint has a rude awakening that took me a few attempts as well. But I found late game to be quite challenging and hit several walls.
Type-0 actually reminds me a lot of Monster Hunter gameplay circa five or six years ago. There've been some huge improvements since then, to be sure.
My computer startup sound in college was that music from the point the camera is panning out to the crescendo and trail off. Back then my desktop icons, background and start menu usually loaded right as the crescendo hit.
Right now I'm leveling Summoner, which is the game's DPS pet/damage over time (DoT) class. I'm at level 64. Level 80 is the current cap. I currently have to:
Keep track of my DoTs and ensure 100% uptime for every encounter
Spread my DoTs to other enemies if I'm dealing with a pack (Bane)
Summon 1 of 3 pets depending on the kind of engagement (packs vs. single boss vs. solo questing)
Use my pet abilities off cooldown... For Ifrit, his attacks have more potency than my own spammable spell
Obtain Aetherflow charges, and use either Fester (with all DoTs up for max damage) on a single enemy or Painflare as an AoE
Use Dreadwyrm Stance whenever it's off cooldown to shorten spell casting cooldowns, reset TriDisaster (spell that applies all my DoTs at once), and gain access to Deathflare
At level 70, I'll have temporary access to Bahamut, which can only be summoned (initially) after 2 Dreadwyrm Stance windows have been completed. Bahamut is his own window in which you need to manage his most powerful attack in the midst of doing everything else.
At level 80, I'll have temporary access to Phoenix, which can only be summoned after Bahamut, and operates differently than him.
All of this while handling mechanics (as a caster, you generally have to stand still to cast spells... while you do have instant casts, they're lower potency, and using too many is a DPS loss).
At this point, I'm hitting a button about every half second, according to a mixture of priority (are my DoTs up? if so, what's my most powerful option that's off cooldown?) and mechanics (do I need to move? is this an add phase? do I need to turn around and stop targeting (XIV loves its gaze attacks)?). Because of the mix of abilities that are off the global cooldown, it's anything but slow. It's now essentially a rhythm game, one that plays differently according to what the enemies are doing, as well as your own party.
IMO, it's definitely worth checking out. Admittedly, the first 50 character levels are somewhat rough due to a combination of it being a brand new game made incredibly quickly after 1.0's debacle, the lack of kit I mentioned above, and the story largely being the prologue to what comes. If you can get past that, you'll experience a pretty damn special game that's a living, breathing love letter to the entire series. A game that takes disparate elements from FF III, FF VII, FF XII, Tactics, etc. and combines them intelligently and believably while keeping true to its own unique setting as well. A game with incredible moments, legit "Holy Shit!" moments, and, at times, moments that are incredibly personal. It also has some amazing music.
It's the best MMO out there, IMO. It makes World of Warcraft look like a steaming pile of shit. And it's also a damn good Final Fantasy game in its own right. It feels like a return to the late 90s/early 2000s. And the latest expansion - Shadowbringers - is haunting. XV wishes its world of darkness was half as creepy as XIV's world of light.
It's the only thing keeping my hope for the franchise alive. I hope Yoshi-P is rewarded with his own offline main series game, because he's definitely earned it.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
That makes me really happy.
Skyrim? Any Diablo-clone? Assassin's Creed?