To be fair, SE has been shying away from the same tried and trusted formula since FFXII. I couldn't imagine an average gamer in the west taking much interest in random enemy encounters and turn based battles nowadays. JRPG's have taken the back seat this gen (partially in the west) so there has to be some kind of hook to keep them interested.. Lets put it this way instead of selecting abilities and spells in timely manner it wouldn't it be amazing to move around and attack in real time.. cast spells and summons on the go?

Hell, even Hironobu Sakaguchi went the way of action RPG with his last big title - The Last Story. Honestly, going back to the standard ATB roots is probably not the best thing for FF at this moment in time.

If it were not for the name and reoccurring themes I'd wager that a lot of gamers (old FF fans and new) would not be interested Final Fantasy. I'm just glad they got Nomura to handle this project because from his track record, I know this is going to a solid game. And I love the fact that it's going to be fresh departure from the earlier titles.

It started in 1997, crossed the point of no return in 2001.

Final Fantasy is dead. What we get now no longer resembles what Final Fantasy.

It is not progressive, or becoming more "modern." It is becoming different just for the sake of being different. FF13 Versus does not do anything fresh or new to videogaming, there are lots of games that play just like it does. The games are getting simpler, they're becoming clunkier, they're becoming more poorly desgined, they're becoming filled with more and more fluff.

If the Square of the PSX era released a game that played like FF13 Versus on the PSX, they wouldn't have branded it as a main series Final Fantasy title, they wouldn't have even branded it as a spinoff Final Fantasy. Nowadays, their standards are much lower.

HappyD you completely wrong on this one. Many people have put forward valid arguments as to why this is a Final Fantasy game yet you don't seem to be taking it in.

The main problem here is that you have already made your mind up about what a FF game is meant to be. Clearly most people don't agree with you on what a FF game is meant to be.

For me, each FF game has changed drastically from one entry to the next. This is no different. The battle system is an important part of the game. But it is only one aspect of the game. I don't think anyone really associates FF with an exact battle system since its always changing. And people like one system but don't like others (whether they are turn based or not its irrelevant).

And again like others have stated in the thread, a Final Fantasy game is MUUUUUCH more than just a battle system. And FF15 looks very much like a FF game. I would even go as far as to say it looks like a typical FF game. How so? Well its a fantasy game, its an RPG and its made in Japan Its really that simple imo.

How do you know this game is "clunky" and "poorly designed" if it has not been released??

You're right. Though, believe it or not, this change started with Final Fantasy 7. That's when the anime archetypes and cliches started permeating into the games. Final Fantasy X just gave the games a voice to sound like anime. Final Fantasy XIII just kicked it into overdrive. This game seems to take it even further.

He's just hating on the series. Rather than say he dislikes the design choices, he's say they're poorly designed which many disagree.

I would say MGS4 from 2/3 was already as big a change as FF XIII to XV. I could actually play through a lot of MGS4 as a shooter and in one playthrough I pretty much did. It was still a Metal Gear Solid game at heart and still had everything I expected from a Metal Gear Solid game.

But no, fans haven't been welcoming of the changes and I was one of them that hated the direction of the recent games. That doesn't mean the writing wasn't on the wall. Like I said, this looks more like a Final Fantasy game then FFXIII imo.

You make fair points but the bottom line is that this was intended as a spin-off and the expectation despite what the possible writing on the wall may have been was that the next entry was not an action game.

I'm not upset, I just can't see this as a FF as we know it and am moving on, the old is gone, the new has come.

Maybe it was intended as a spin off, but after evaluating the scale of it and the things you can do within the game changed it rom a spin off into a main series. I mean nomura talked in the past about a world map and airships. This game is obviously a very ambitious project in terms of scale and freedom. This is why I think they shifted away from a spin off. I rather have a open world FF with action combat than a linear game like X, X-2 and XIII series. FF is not about the combat, its about leveling up and seeing connections with things like summons etc. Things that share a connection with every FF game that has been released.