Final Fantasy XIII

[SolidSnakeDog]

Vanya says : If I want kick-ass stories, free roaming worlds, and complex battle systems that actually make me use my noggin, that's when I turn to an RPG.

This is EXATLY what a final fantasy should be and ALWAYS should be.
Too bad there fucking it up lately.

[Kaijyuu]

I think there's certainly a place for action RPGs. Think Kingdom Hearts, Diablo, and Star Ocean -- three very different types of battle systems, all under the "action" category, and all interesting.

Honestly I think the "use your noggin" RPG battle systems are falling behind. Everyone who wants to make a deep turn based battle system just uses a grid, and it's getting pretty predictable. There are more things than movement to add depth, and movement has a lot more options than using a chessboard or hex grid. Yet everyone sticks with those or gets criticized for trying something different... (Phantom Brave had a gridless system that everyone I know hated. I just thought it badly implemented, not inherently a bad idea.)

[Vanya]

I think there's certainly a place for action RPGs. Think Kingdom Hearts, Diablo, and Star Ocean -- three very different types of battle systems, all under the "action" category, and all interesting.

Yes there is a place for them. I'm just not happy about an established RPG series completely changing genres without changing titles.

Honestly I think the "use your noggin" RPG battle systems are falling behind. Everyone who wants to make a deep turn based battle system just uses a grid, and it's getting pretty predictable. There are more things than movement to add depth, and movement has a lot more options than using a chessboard or hex grid. Yet everyone sticks with those or gets criticized for trying something different... (Phantom Brave had a gridless system that everyone I know hated. I just thought it badly implemented, not inherently a bad idea.)

That doesn't mean they should be abandoned. If anything, it should be the focus of the RPG series like Final Fantasy to work on improving that style of play rather than working their way out of it. That's just a cop out. And besides that, the problems with FF13 run much deeper than just the battle system.