The Fury said:
1. From the demo, I found the combat good, I expected it to be but in the end it has button mashing. I understand that they could update and evolve the combat but it was too far removed from what FF7 was for me. 'Traditional' was listed at 'characters attack automatically and it's set to 'easy'. Abilities existed to begin with was weird, stagger is a joke in FF13 it has no place here either (stagger is never a 'best bit' :P).
2. And that is the reason why I bought Persona 5, the more traditional turn based party gameplay (plus the style of it was so cool looking). I've watched videos by Jim Sterling where be makes points about how sometimes big companies make a traditional game (Octopath Traveler) like they used to and then are weirdly surprised when it succeeds. Like the people that like those games suddenly don't exist. P5 sold better than any other Persona game because fans of that style of gameplay weren't being given any, so they flocked to it. |
1. Honestly, even the stagger in the remake works well! I pretty much hated everything about the combat system in FFXIII but the staggering in this game does genuinely add to the different strategies you have to employ, especially with the harder bosses. Like I said, I was shocked at the layers of depth and the level of detail that went into the combat. I find it far more strategic and balanced than the original game. And the post-completion hard mode adds a completely new layer of challenge and depth that makes you completely change how you play!
2. The big companies do invest in traditional games but they're much lower budget (mid-tier budgets often), as anything above that is deemed too risky. This is what I meant by these titles need to start approaching Final Fantasy level sales on their own merits before they'll risk it. Although they do better than expectations I don't think they're currently enough above expectations to warrant risking a Final Fantasy scale budget.
A similar thing happened in WRPGs. A lot of traditional WRPGs (Baldur's Gate style) seemed to disappear. I think the last big budget title was Dragon Age Origins before Bioware completely changed the formula. There was a big kickstarter push a little while back and a lot of mid-tier budget titles (Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, Torment: Tides of Numenera) started coming out and now we have a new Baldur's Gate coming out (although no idea what the budget is like!).
There does seem to be a major push on nostalgia across all video games. Remakes, remasters, re-imaginings etc. all seem to be charting well across all genres to the point of making sequels for franchises thought dead: Call of Duty Modern Warfare remakes, Half-Life remake Black Mesa, Age of Empires definitive editions and AoE4, Warcraft 3, Resident Evil remakes, Baldur's Gate 3... nostalgia does sell.
