I don't mean this to really bash the game, it is still better than most RPGs on home console this generation; but Square again has made some silly "innovations" that don't really help the game or advance the genre, but rather pollute the traditional RPG experience (which is really a very solid formula and has lots of room to explore) with annoying mechanics.
1. The battle system is overly complex. There is no reason why they just can't use a more simplistic system with a wide variety of options (like Pokemon, Chrono Trigger, and Dragon Quest). There is not really much gained here, and it actually subtracts from the experience. There is nothing special accomplished here with a more complicated system involved. It doesn't make the game "more hardcore!!!!!" or "1337" or whatever pretentious label people apply nowadays. Chrono Trigger is a great example of how a very simple battle system can accomplish a huge amount.
2. The dialogue system is pretty crap, there are a lot of points where you have to select from a list of different responses. This doesn't add anything to the game, it just changes dialogue and makes the player feel like they missed something by choosing one option over another. In adventure games, like Phoenix Wright, where dialogue option selection is a core game mechanic, it actually serves an important end to the quest; but I don't think this works well in RPGs where the core gameplay goals are different from those of non-action based adventure games.
3. Quick Time Events, while cool, it really just feels like pollution. This is a trend I hate, there is too much action genre pollution seeping into RPGs on home console. This is probably why the market is booming on handhelds where action elements are not polluting the genre. Again, this doesn't add to the game at all, it just serves to annoy the player because they are forced to take part in a mini-game with cheap mechanics. While the outcome of this mini-game does effect the scene which plays - it feels like a lot of resources are wasted resources; there is no reason why they couldn't just record one scene as the canon.
Anyway, I don't see why the simple menu selection systems with streamlined dialogue sequences really needs to be tampered with; it is a very solid formula; and as games like Pokemon, Chrono Trigger, and even later ones like FF10 and Dragon Quest 9 have shown, there's still a LOT of potential to explore here. The reason why the RPG genre on home consoles has declined is not because they are too much the same as they have been before; the genre grew and thrived for nearly 20 years without change, and in the last 5-8 years has been declining, ONLY when the majority of developers started to evolve the formula rather than improve on existing formulas and concepts. In reality, they're just making an inferior sub-genre. Dragon Quest 9 released in 2010 to record breaking sales, and that is with a story that has been weaker than previous installations, but what it did was it took the existing formula and improved it without introducing over-complication and action elements. What RPGs should be aiming for is making as simple a system as possible, allowing the player to do as much as possible.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
