After spending around 30 hours with FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE by now and still being nowhere near having enough of it, I had to write a post. Maybe, with a bit of luck, someone from Square Enix will even read it.
First of all, I really hope FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE is or becomes a big financial success for SE. I’m playing the new game and I’m absolutely loving it. And for me, that mainly comes down to two things. Yes, the story is great again too, but Square Enix has always been good at that, so huge praise to the writers as well.
What pulls me into this new game the most, though, is the turn-based combat and the return of an overworld map. That, to me, is what Final Fantasy should be, and that’s how I love it.
I had pretty much written FF off after X and X-2, when the series gradually moved from turn-based combat to hybrid systems and eventually almost completely into action combat. I also really missed the overworld map starting with X and X-2, although those games still had quite a few secrets to discover.
Back then, as a kid, I was so hyped for every new FF that I always saved money so I could buy the next one. When FF12 came out, I have to admit, to my shame, that I even stole a little money from my parents’ wallet because I was short on what I needed to buy it. =D But that was also the point where it slowly stopped feeling like the Final Fantasy I had loved so much. Familiar Espers/Summons were suddenly mostly names attached to warships, and the combat system wasn’t really what I knew anymore either.
Then came FF13 and 13-2, where the combat system moved a small step back toward what I liked, but they also added some really annoying design decisions that frustrated a lot of fans. For example, if the main character died in battle, it was Game Over even if the rest of the party was still perfectly fine. In my opinion, Square Enix misunderstood the criticism and assumed the entire combat system was the reason people complained, even though that wasn’t really the case.
Then FF15 came out. I played it, and the story was actually pretty good, but I could never stick with it for long. I tried again and again, but at least for me the combat became so boring that I kept dropping the game. That had never happened to me with a Final Fantasy before. Up until then, I had finished every FF at least once, and many of them several times.
I liked FF16 a little more, but even there I only made it a bit past the halfway point, I think. I believe it was around the point where the stepmother died in the story. Even then, I just didn’t feel a strong urge to continue. Action combat can be fun at first, but just like in FF15, it quickly becomes repetitive when you’re mostly pressing the same one or two buttons or repeating the same combo.
You could probably say that you don’t technically do that much more in the new game either, but with turn-based combat you actually have to think about what works against which enemy and especially what you need to do against bosses. That makes fights much more exciting to me because I have to think and pay attention instead of mindlessly pressing the same two buttons.
I basically ignored the FF7 Remake because it went back to action combat again, and honestly, that kind of gameplay has become really boring to me nowadays because there are already so many games doing it. When I look at the combat in the latest entries, it sometimes reminds me more of combat from games like Wuthering Waves, Zenless Zone Zero, NTE or similar games, just with more realistic graphics instead of the anime look.
I can also imagine that after Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 became so successful with its turn-based combat mixed with timing/minigame elements, similar to what games like The Legend of Dragoon and Shadow Hearts: Covenant already did years ago, FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE may have been developed partly as a test to see how well this kind of game would still be received.
And I really hope that’s the case.
If RESONANCE becomes a success for Square Enix, I really hope we might eventually get a proper FF17 or FF18 again with a beautiful modern graphics engine, a creative and original turn-based combat system, and a proper overworld map full of secrets that we as players actually want to discover.
