Kotaku: What Final Fantasy needs is not a return to turn-based, but a better story

2025-07-16 23:52:24|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

Since "Light and Shadow: Expedition No. 33" unexpectedly became popular earlier this year, there has been a view that the gameplay of this turn-based fantasy RPG can heal all the disadvantages of the "Final Fantasy" series.Expedition No. 33 provides a retro interpretation of this genre, with far fewer flaws than Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, and has received rave reviews, favorites of the year, and impressive sales as a new studio.Fans of Final Fantasy are envious of this.

"Oh God, I see you gave you so many good things to "Light and Shadow: Expedition No. 33", can we "Final Fantasy" get the same treatment?" - This mentality can almost be felt directly from the player community.So, the discussion around "What can Square Enix learn from this new work" gradually heated up.For many players who have been following the series for a long time, the most direct conclusion is: perhaps Final Fantasy should return to turn-based.

In response to this issue, Naoki Yoshida, the producer of Final Fantasy 16, responded at the 2025 Los Angeles Comic Con.

"With the question of 'turn-based or action-based', players tend to limit gameplay to combat systems. This doesn't take into account what kind of game the creator wants to bring to players. For example, the quality of the picture we want to present to players, or the narrative we want to convey to players, will affect how we design the overall system of the game."

Yoshida added: "This not only involves the combat system, but also includes multiple aspects such as the overall direction of the game design and the operation experience. This is not a simple two-choice issue. As for "Final Fantasy 17" and even "18", I personally may not participate, so I don't want to set any restrictions for the future production team, and I don't want to box their creative space in advance."

This statement actually reveals an important fact: the development of the sequel is not simply a functional splicing.Art style, narrative structure, and gameplay mechanism must be coordinated with each other in order to build a complete work.Ideally, all system designs should be derived naturally, rather than forced into it, just to cater to market demand or shareholder expectations.

Many discussions nowadays use "Expedition No. 33" as the benchmark and repeatedly compare it with "Final Fantasy", but in fact, the core issue of modern "Final Fantasy" is not in the combat system.

The combat part of "Final Fantasy 16" is precise in operation, outstanding visual performance, and has a very complete action design.Its main shortcomings are that the system is not in depth enough - for example, the linkage mechanism of the summoning beast skills is not rich enough, the element attributes are weak, the equipment system changes are limited, and the overall difficulty is low.These problems can be completely optimized through subsequent works iterative optimization.After all, the system has been continuously improved through version replacement many times in the history of the series.

As for "Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth", in a sense, it is actually a "half turn-based" work.Since the birth of the ATB system (active time combat), Final Fantasy's battle has always found a balance between real-time and command operations.The combat system of "Rebirth" is officially called "command combat".Although players can freely move, dodge or cooperate with teammates to launch a connection, the core operation is still to issue instructions through the menu and the character will automatically execute it.This is actually very close to the design logic of "Expedition No. 33", and is even more complex in system.

Of course, it is completely understandable if players want to see a "Final Fantasy" with high-standard graphics performance and combined with traditional turn-based gameplay.There are already many works on the market to meet this demand, and Square Enix also has several works to serve this audience.But simply attributed the current problem of the series to "the combat system deviates from tradition", this statement is actually not accurate.

What really restricts the development of "Final Fantasy" in recent years is actually the plot.

This is not a new problem.It can be said that since the end of the PS2 era, the narrative quality of "Final Fantasy" has entered a decline."Final Fantasy 12" is still superior in terms of world view and system, but the plot is no longer as complete as the previous work.The problems in subsequent works are more obvious.

"Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth" has reached a very high level in the technical level. The performances, open world exploration, and system design are all very highlights, but when recreating important plot points of the original work, they are handled quite poorly.It provides no compelling new interpretation, lacks the emotional tension it deserves, and even weakens the impact of some classic plots.

For example, the overall visual and gameplay performance of the Golden Disk Theme Park is excellent, but the side plot about Barrett has been greatly simplified.This past in which he was exploited by Shenluo Company to become a Mohan factory in the past, which was originally an important plot point in the original work.But in "Rebirth", Barrett's reunion with his old friend Dane becomes an overly superficial moral preaching, losing the complex emotions and conflicts it deserves.This approach, throughout the game, ends up confusing and unconvincing.

Final Fantasy 16 has even more serious problems.Although the role interactions between Clive, Joshua and Sid are quite exciting, the macro narrative appears logically confusing and rigid in dealing with geopolitics and magical slavery.The game sets an extremely harsh worldview, but does not really explore the relevant moral and emotional conflicts. In the end, it even ends with an old-school "hand of gods"-style plot, directly erasing the previous emotional investment of players in the fate of the characters.As a whole experience, it is still a great work, but the narrative at the end of the third act does remind people of the disappointment of the final season of Game of Thrones.Therefore, the real revelation brought by "Expedition No. 33" is not that "RPG must return to turn-based to win players", but that even traditional turn-based games, as long as the narrative, performance, and character shaping are excellent enough, they can still impress modern players.

The next work of "Final Fantasy" can achieve this goal based on the existing combat system.As for those players who really want a "pure turn-making masterpiece", you might as well pay attention to "Dragon Quest 12", which should be not far from being released.

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