You know what I want Yoko Taro to direct Final Fantasy XVII it would be interesting to see what happens.
And since things have moved on a little, here's my list for XVI -
Set during either late Medieval or post-industrial-pre-WWI era. A situation vaguely similar to XII with two rival powers in the midst of a Cold War, and innocents getting caught in the middle - possibly this time over natural crystal resources.
Crystal in this world retain memories of past experiences, and are key to both the plot and to the use of Jobs, tying the story and gameplay together.
Has female lead protagonist raised outside the system of civilization on either side, so she can offer a disinterested and relatively unbiased POV for players.
Navigation: a combination of the encounter-free overworld navigable on foot, by Chocobo or using airship/boat, while to-scale environments allow players to see and avoid characters representing enemy groups as they appear on-screen at all times. Dungeon environments chockablock with both puzzles and enemies, and varying from subterranean mysteries to airy platform-based head-stretchers.
Balance of male and female party members. No more than eight so the game's story doesn't get swamped. Also not only humans, but a multi-race cast.
Battle system pseudo turn-based affair ala Shadow Hearts or the latest Persona. Make timing and striking enemy weaknesses actually mean something this time, like granting bonuses, speeding ATB refill or immobilizing enemy for one turn depending on which turn-based variation is chosen. Also depending on a combination of items and weapons and assigned jobs can grant a "Player Advantage" in battle seperate from which lands the first strike to trigger battle. Limit breaks are in, but rather than just being very powerful attacks, it varies from job to job and character to character (a Monk-esque brawler might get a furious attack, while a White Mage could grant temporary immortality, while again a different job might be granted an instant kill on their chosen target sans main story bosses). As this is in danger of unbalancing the flow of gameplay, filling Limit Break gauge is slow and carries its own risks, although it is carried over from battle to battle, so the battle system relies more on skill and knowledge over just beefing your way through.
Leveling through EXP increases characters' health, MP and character-specific passive buss. Also earned are points which are used in the skill tree system.
Skill trees are a streamlined version of the XV Astral Grid. Each node and node cluster unlocks Job/Character specific attributes which react to each other in different ways depending which character is using which Job. Some are user-adjustable, but most have pre-set effects.
Make weapon affinity element-based rather than job based, meaning a mix and match approach to jobs. The job itself has its own passive skills, but weapons change up the move set and attack speed.
Summons (evoked from the memories of the crystals) are handled similarly to FF10, being summoned in and taking the place of a party member in battle - they can only linger for a set number of turns and need a rest period of several battles before they can be summoned again, but they grant buffs to the party and deal devastating attacks, including their limit-break like signature attacks.
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Tornak