I think they have a high-level strategic goal mirroring BioWare’s leadership in this: ‘RPG combat that feels vital, active, and dynamic’. Like what we used to talk about incessantly, breaking down unneeded abstractions from earlier turn-based systems.
But where BioWare actually ground it out through KotoR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, finally figuring it out in Mass Effect 2, to then lose that ground as the it was eaten by action games incorporating RPG progression and conversation, Square has been flailing between new! and unique! and different! takes on action combat that aren’t really built upon but birthed into the world half-formed.
If I saw them getting better over time I’d agree with you, but…really, the combat in FFXV is such a disaster
i can’t imagine it any other way than some unquestionable big wig fucking straight blasting through the doors during a meeting one day and screeching “YOU HANG TO SURVIVE” and then disappearing never to be seen again
With wait mode on, ffxv combat became one of two videogames with rtwp combat that I could stand, so I don’t think disaster is the right word. More that what works was serendipitous
you’ll never find anyone who likes real-time action with pausing more than me but actions are so unclearly flowing into each other and the targeting is fubar’d and the squad tactics are so happenstance and I could really pump out ten thousand words but I’d really like to ask,
Did you feel like you were in control, that you could plan at a high level and execute, that you were tested across the skills the game asked for your competence in?
Well, yes, by the end of the game, I felt very much in control. Every weapon had a full secret moveset that was fun for me to learn. I was not always tested, but times when I would stumble upon an optional secret boss and struggle to defeat them despite being sorely underleveled were some of the best times I’ve had in FFXV combat.
Targeting was a non issue for me because of wait mode.
i found the combat in 15 totally incoherent, even by the end of the game i never felt like i was in control or achieving any kind of ‘mastery’ and things just sort of happened
what tulpa describes there sounds great but for whatever reason it just never clicked with me, there was never an “oh fuck, i get it now” moment
I used wait mode too, but I only ever felt like I was making decisions like, ‘target unit X versus Y’, ‘warp to heal->warp strike’, ‘use healing item’. The directional attacks felt like they had little functional difference – it didn’t feel like a game where spacing mattered, and they weren’t intended to, say, attack up to get out of the way of ground sweeps, asking you to use the generic block/counter instead.
I did fights above my level but I read my success as a result of reading my character state and appropriately leaving/returning to the fight (to say nothing of the silly way they use level to indicate swarm enemies, so you see a unit composition of 1xlvl40 = 5xlvl15, going against all tradition). Getting into the downed loop is just obnoxious, with unclear penalties and easy to slip into the potion-burning state due to the max HP drop with downs.
Even the spells were wonky, ridiculously overpowered early game, but plateauing in strength, friendly fire enabled but without tools to move allies or read the spell radius before casting, and an extremely fussy and maintenance-heavy crafting system behind it.
so much of the game for me was exactly the opposite of this. Spacing myself for effective warp strikes, closing distance with forward attack spear and air comboing to avoid getting swarmed. Using squad abilities to manage aggro so I can blindside enemies.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this game is perfect by any means but I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by the combat. It had a lot of flaws but I wouldn’t ever call it a disaster.
I didn’t bother with spells except as a thing I would throw out to take advantage of a weakness or something.
Anyway the best part of combat was drinking a smoothie at the chocobo ranch to prepare to fight a coeurl
I probably need to watch someone who feels really competent. My understanding of the system is that, like Arkham-style combat, spacing is virtually nonexistent due to enemy AI behavior, friendly AI behavior, player mobility, and the lack of distance thresholds for weapons.
i played on Active on my first playthrough and i would say that at times i felt like i had control of what was happening, but towards the end of the game, when battles get really hairy, it more or less felt like being in a drunken brawl (or…what i imagine one would be like). that still wasn’t bad to me, per se, but it was certainly frustrating.
my friend played with Wait Mode and seemed to have really gotten into it that way, so i’m going to try it on this second playthrough. so far…kind of confused by it.
It’s better overall but they have some real odd decisions in there like the wait timer to scan often being >30 seconds, supposedly to balance against the minute-plus-length wait timer? And they’ll run dialogue scenes in a combat where you’re not fighting but if you stop the game pauses, so you need to run in circles
Watched Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive on my friend’s media server the other day and holy shit has the product placement in Final Fantasy gotten buck wild:
