"According to Tabata, combat isn’t about pressing a button once for a single action to happen.
“Rather, they are a continuous flow of movements,” Tabata told Kotaku. “It’s more about the movements that are associated with the buttons and building upon them for actions through the combat system.”
Playing it will feel “very natural,” Tabata said. “The way a game play has to feel good.”
To Game Informer, he said, “We won’t go into too much detail, but you can switch between an offensive stance and a defensive stance with the push of a button.”
At the Tokyo Game Show, Tabata shared few combat details, but said that holding down the attack button creates a string of interlinking attacks, while holding down the defend button will guard enemy attacks.
Speaking to 4Gamer, Tabata said gameplay is less about focusing on menus and more about playing around and navigating 3D spaces, albeit with predetermined moves. He describes it as similar to Final Fantasy XII‘s Gambit System.
There are no menu commands in combat. It controls like an action game where players switch between offense and defense. You can only control Noctis, but you can give orders to other party members. And there are menus to give commands to everyone, swap out weapons, etc.
Noctis can teleport around battlefields by throwing sword and getting it to stick in places, Tabata told 4Gamer. There are existing conditions that limit how it can be used, although they can change depending on battlefield conditions.
The effects of magic can also affect enemies in more abstract ways, Tabata told Famitsu. Fire, for instance, can make enemies run away from the heat.
As for enemy encounters, “it’s all seamless.”
“You’ve got enemies that are roaming around in all areas…there’s not an ‘encounter,’ per se. It’s all seamless,” Tabata told Game Informer.
http://gematsu.com/2014/09/final-fantasy-xv-director-talks-development-open-world-combat-demo
So it's more or less like XIIs combat?
Not sure how I feel about that.
Essay Pro