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Fun Club Will FFXVI even be a "RPG"??

Will FFXVI be an RPG?

  • Yes

    Votes: 48 30.6%

  • No

    Votes: 52 33.1%

  • Genres have no meaning anymore (No #2)

    Votes: 57 36.3%
  • Total voters
    157
Scrawnton

Scrawnton

T1D Gamer
Founder
I mean, I get that you will play the role of a character on a journey, but will this game even be an RPG by genre definitions? What even is an RPG?

I mean, a lot of people don't consider BotW, Horizon, or Ghosts of Tsushima to be in the RPG genre, but I bet they'd definitely be considered RPGs compared to FFXVI....
 
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So far it looks to me like it'll be about as much of an RPG as Horizon Zero Dawn
 
It'll be an action RPG with equipment, abilities, character growth and such. We just haven't seen much of it yet.
 
"RPG" is already a pretty ill-defined genre. Basically the entire gaming space moved to making their games more RPG-like. So the lines are going to be blurry.

But I think it's an RPG enough. Screens where the players are upgrading their stats don't really play as well in flashy trailers.
 
As others have said, it will obviously be an RPG. It's not any different than something like Dark Souls or a Zelda game.

Twilight Sword said:
Final Fantasy hasn’t even been Final Fantasy for over a decade…gotta top that off somehow I guess.
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Yup. Never got over the betrayal of them making a Final Fantasy 2. I mean give me a break!
 
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Weirdly, despite the gameplay shifting up so much from game to game, I still find the DNA in Final Fantasy games intact. Even going through XV, it felt Final Fantasy, despite me controlling a single character and everything being incredibly "live". Same with XIII, and with XII (arguably the black sheep).

I compare this to my experience to playing DQXI right now, which am so far of the opinion that it is one of the best produced, most charming, and incredibly average jRPGs I have ever played. I can feel every thread of classic jRPG running through that game, even the design of towns oozes top down 2D in its structure. But, I'm not sure if that is a good thing. Sure it must be comforting as a lover of jRPGs but I'm currently searching for the various orbs in the game wondering at which point the game is going to take off.

Is it ok to abandon classic structures and tropes? I'd probably say yes. You can do that and still not lose the essence.
 
Game of Thrones + Kaiju WrestleMania, sounds like an RPG to me!
 
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When was the last Final Fantasy that was actually an RPG? FF 3 back in 1990?

I really wish I could memory wipe the term from existence. It has no meaning any more whatsoever. "You play as a character whose stats increase" covers over 50% of video games these days. Soccer games, racing games, shooters. "Yeah, but you play as a character whose stats increase AND HE HAS A SWORD" - that is not a genre.

There are real RPGs, still. Games where you create a character from scratch and your choices determine the story. But the term is useless now.
 
Heron said:
When was the last Final Fantasy that was actually an RPG? FF 3 back in 1990?

I really wish I could memory wipe the term from existence. It has no meaning any more whatsoever. "You play as a character whose stats increase" covers over 50% of video games these days. Soccer games, racing games, shooters. "Yeah, but you play as a character whose stats increase AND HE HAS A SWORD" - that is not a genre.

There are real RPGs, still. Games where you create a character from scratch and your choices determine the story. But the term is useless now.
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The last one that felt like what I consider an RPG was FFX. FFXII was good but it was already straying by having the party act with AI (although the Gambit system was a good way to feel like you were still playing the party), and I liked XIII but the battle system leaned away from even controlling the main character at that point. XV was an experience but it didn't feel like an RPG at all to me, though I appreciated the fact that the party was at least still there. Now XVI appears to have ditched the party so..

It's like ever since Sakaguchi left they just kept shaving off pieces of series standards until I don't even recognize the games anymore.

I've said before and I don't wanna beat a dead horse but Xenoblade feels more like Final Fantasy to me now than Final Fantasy itself does.
 
I've played every single mainline title (starting on the SNES) and I have no idea what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy to people. If you would have shown me the trailers for this game even without the eidolons I would have easily guessed it's FF. I never felt the franchise had much of a standard/mold it tries to fit into like how DQ or Pokemon etc so do, for better or worse.
 
chocolate_supra said:
The last one that felt like what I consider an RPG was FFX. FFXII was good but it was already straying by having the party act with AI (although the Gambit system was a good way to feel like you were still playing the party), and I liked XIII but the battle system leaned away from even controlling the main character at that point. XV was an experience but it didn't feel like an RPG at all to me, though I appreciated the fact that the party was at least still there. Now XVI appears to have ditched the party so..

It's like ever since Sakaguchi left they just kept shaving off pieces of series standards until I don't even recognize the games anymore.

I've said before and I don't wanna beat a dead horse but Xenoblade feels more like Final Fantasy to me now than Final Fantasy itself does.
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But what about FFX felt like an RPG? Because it didn't to me.

It feels more like you're saying "FFX is the last game that felt like a traditional turn-based FF" - which it was. But in terms of story, FFX was the first that was fully voice acted so to me it was actually the biggest break between anything you could consider role playing because you could no longer use your imagination to flesh out the dialogue, and "role-play" as the main character. They were now defined, acted characters no different to a TV show or movie.
 
Heron said:
But what about FFX felt like an RPG? Because it didn't to me.

It feels more like you're saying "FFX is the last game that felt like a traditional turn-based FF" - which it was. But in terms of story, FFX was the first that was fully voice acted so to me it was actually the biggest break between anything you could consider role playing because you could no longer use your imagination to flesh out the dialogue, and "role-play" as the main character. They were now defined, acted characters no different to a TV show or movie.
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Oh yeah, true, I never considered what the voice acting would change in feel.

But I dunno how to pinpoint the other bit.. there's something about the Sakaguchi games that felt different in terms of the story, the characters, the worlds. I wish I knew better how to describe it and break it down. Even VIII, which could be considered the biggest departure from the bunch in terms of theme and setting, still felt like FF to me as soon as we got to the "the moon cries monsters out onto the planet" part. But something about the newer games feels off.

All that being said, I actually really do want FFXVI to take me by surprise and bring me back around. I'll definitely be playing it at some point (if it ever breaks away from PS5 exclusivity) and I really hope it makes me love it. I've heard nothing but good about XIV (and this is the same team, right?) so my fingers are crossed.
 
chocolate_supra said:
Oh yeah, true, I never considered what the voice acting would change in feel.

But I dunno how to pinpoint the other bit.. there's something about the Sakaguchi games that felt different in terms of the story, the characters, the worlds. I wish I knew better how to describe it and break it down. Even VIII, which could be considered the biggest departure from the bunch in terms of theme and setting, still felt like FF to me as soon as we got to the "the moon cries monsters out onto the planet" part. But something about the newer games feels off.

All that being said, I actually really do want FFXVI to take me by surprise and bring me back around. I'll definitely be playing it at some point (if it ever breaks away from PS5 exclusivity) and I really hope it makes me love it. I've heard nothing but good about XIV (and this is the same team, right?) so my fingers are crossed.
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I think what you mean is the essence of the game, and you are on point. This is something I was discussing with a friend last week in how FF doesn't have a single essence (which is not a bad thing BTW) simply because the vision of each director changes, which explains why you feel the sakaguchi games as similar. This is something that other franchises like DQ or Atelier still mantains.

So for example if somene tells me they liked DQ8 and want to play another one I can recommend any of the mainline games because the core essence its the same in all of them. Sure they would have to adapt to graphics but everything from the economy, battle system, and exploration remains the same.
Meanwhile for FF I can't do that. If someone tells me their first FF is XV, I'd recommend for them to wait for XVI or other ARPG like Tales, Star Ocean, Scarlet Nexus or similar instead of older FF, as the difference in style is too much.
 
chocolate_supra said:
FFXII was good but it was already straying by having the party act with AI (although the Gambit system was a good way to feel like you were still playing the party)
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If automatic party action is a disqualifier, we're gonna need to toss out a lot of Dragon Quest. I thought XII was a great balance and I'm disappointed there's not more like it 15+ years later, giving you complete control whenever you wanted, but also offloading repetitive tasks to the CPU entirely at your discretion.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
If automatic party action is a disqualifier, we're gonna need to toss out a lot of Dragon Quest. I thought XII was a great balance and I'm disappointed there's not more like it 15+ years later, giving you complete control whenever you wanted, but also offloading repetitive tasks to the CPU entirely at your discretion.
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I thought DQ was all old-school turn based? I've only played DQXI but I was under the impression that it was a good representative of the series as a whole.

And I don't necessarily mean it as a disqualifier (otherwise I would see Xenoblade as being disqualified), I was more just painting a picture of how the systems got further and further away from what I'd consider "an RPG battle system" with each post-Sakaguchi entry. I actually agree that XII was a good balance, and if FF had stuck with that system (or something similar, like XB) I probably would still be fine with it. It simply was the first step from the system being menu-based towards being action-based.


Though in responding to yall I've been able to reflect a bit on why, to me, FF "felt like an RPG" and now "doesn't feel like an RPG," and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that I never had any exposure to traditional pen-and-paper RPGs where "RPG" meant creating a character and playing the role. My exposure to RPGs came from Square's SNES catalogue. So I saw "RPG" as meaning "menu-based action, turn-based battle, controlling a whole party traveling with you, emphasis on exploring and talking to NPCs to flesh out a story and a world, and progress giving opportunities for levelling up and more equipment/weapons/setup."

Xenoblade still feels like an RPG to me because even though you aren't specifically controlling each physical attack, there's at least still a palette of actions to select from (similar to a menu system) and all the other elements I mentioned are present. Modern FFs have removed menu-based action and turn-based battle, and since a lot of modern action games have injected RPG-style levelling and equipment, by comparison FFXV felt more like I was playing a typical modern hack-and-slash action game. FFXVI now appears to even be removing the party aspect, which means it'll only be retaining the exploration and levelling.

Which makes it more like Skyrim. Which is an RPG.

And that's the kicker. My whole thought process circled right back around to a game that is definitely an RPG, it's just not what I expect from an RPG. Because my initial exposure to and decades of experience with the genre was something very specific, and was more a subset of RPGs than it was a definitive representative of the genre as a whole. Which is probably also why I had a hard time communicating why modern FF feels different, because it's my own perspective of the genre that Final Fantasy has moved away from, not necessarily the genre itself.

So I guess what's really going on is not me lamenting that Final Fantasy has moved away from the RPG genre. It's that Final Fantasy has turned into a WRPG.

*runs away*
 
I feel like the question sorta implies that RPG = "turn-based RPG" and that's 100% not the case. But I don't think this game is going to be a DMC clone, it's more an evolution of FF7R.
 
Depends on how deep the character customization goes.

Aggrocrog said:
I feel like the question sorta implies that RPG = "turn-based RPG" and that's 100% not the case. But I don't think this game is going to be a DMC clone, it's more an evolution of FF7R.
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It would require a pause button/tactical mode for that. The best way to describe what we've seen of FFXVI so far is a really high budget Ys game.
 
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chocolate_supra said:
I thought DQ was all old-school turn based? I've only played DQXI but I was under the impression that it was a good representative of the series as a whole.
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The NES version of Dragon Quest IV had AI party members only like Persona 3, I think that's what the other poster was referring to. DQ4 was infamous for having the healer character's AI continually cast the instant death spell that hardly ever worked.
 
EtherPenguin said:
The NES version of Dragon Quest IV had AI party members only like Persona 3, I think that's what the other poster was referring to. DQ4 was infamous for having the healer character's AI continually cast the instant death spell that hardly ever worked.
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Right. And even in XI though allies can be controlled I think them being AI is the default?
 
This new FF looks so generic to me, not a good sign.
FYI what I said generic means it looks like a normal triple A game. Not any developers could make that for sure but there are certainly many other developers could make a game look & play like this new FF. In short, lost its identity.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Right. And even in XI though allies can be controlled I think them being AI is the default?
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Yea, I remember now that was the default. I think the option for AI controls exists in most of them starting from 4, 4 stuck out in particular because you were forced to work with the AI until the remakes gave the option for manual controls. The monsters in 5 could also ignore you and choose actions by themselves until their wisdom stat got above a certain threshold (which the monkey in Eastward's Earthborn minigame was a neat reference to if anyone played that).
 
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Leica said:
I've played every single mainline title (starting on the SNES) and I have no idea what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy to people. If you would have shown me the trailers for this game even without the eidolons I would have easily guessed it's FF. I never felt the franchise had much of a standard/mold it tries to fit into like how DQ or Pokemon etc so do, for better or worse.
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Right. FF is a series that deliberately tries to reinvent itself with each installment. What “FF” means is that it’s a big-budget flagship RPG with high production values from Square Enix, and that it probably shares some creature names and item names and a few musical cues with prior games.

In the early days of the series, games that weren’t even in the FF series had the FF brand slapped on then outside of Japan, so I don’t think it makes sense to pretend that the FF brand ever really meant something beyond simply denoting Square’s flagship RPG series and a few rough gameplay conventions. People can try to say “it means Amano/Nomura/Uematsu!” but for every iconic FF game with art or music by those individuals there’s an equally iconic FF game without that.
 
Gay Bowser said:
In the early days of the series, games that weren’t even in the FF series had the FF brand slapped on then outside of Japan, so I don’t think it makes sense to pretend that the FF brand ever really meant something beyond simply denoting Square’s flagship RPG series and a few rough gameplay conventions. People can try to say “it means Amano/Nomura/Uematsu!” but for every iconic FF game with art or music by those individuals there’s an equally iconic FF game without that.
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FF is pretty broad, but to suggest I-IX didn't share a lot in common (especially with the ones near them) is going a bit far. But that was also what essentially amounts to the first third of the franchise now.
 
Gay Bowser said:
Right. FF is a series that deliberately tries to reinvent itself with each installment. What “FF” means is that it’s a big-budget flagship RPG with high production values from Square Enix, and that it probably shares some creature names and item names and a few musical cues with prior games.

In the early days of the series, games that weren’t even in the FF series had the FF brand slapped on then outside of Japan, so I don’t think it makes sense to pretend that the FF brand ever really meant something beyond simply denoting Square’s flagship RPG series and a few rough gameplay conventions. People can try to say “it means Amano/Nomura/Uematsu!” but for every iconic FF game with art or music by those individuals there’s an equally iconic FF game without that.
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I disagree, the first six games definitely have a shared identity. I don't see how that changes just because the first Mana and SaGa games were given the brand name in the west. That'd be like telling people they're pretending if they thought Mario ever had an identity because RPG, sports, and kart racing spinoffs exist or because his name was slapped on Doki Doki Panic outside Japan.

An interesting watch is Resonant Arc's deep dive into the spirit of Final Fantasy which feels relevant to this subject. It's a long video, but here's a relevant highlight from the podcast:
 
Scrawnton said:
I mean, I get that you will play the role of a character on a journey, but will this game even be an RPG by genre definitions? What even is ab RPG?

I mean, a lot of people don't consider BotW, Horizon, or Ghosts of Tsushima to be in the RPG genre, but I bet they'd definitely be considered RPGs compared to FFXVI....
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If kingdom hearts and ys are RPGs then FFXVI will be
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
FF is pretty broad, but to suggest I-IX didn't share a lot in common (especially with the ones near them) is going a bit far. But that was also what essentially amounts to the first third of the franchise now.
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See this is kind of what I mean when no one can really agree what Final Fantasy's "DNA" is IMO. 7 to 9 are very different games from the first 6 to me, not just because they're 3D. Maybe 6 is part of that too even. The only real defining feature of FF is being high budget, high spectacle jrpgs that tend to push fidelity in some capacity.
 
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Red Monster said:
I don’t understand why XVI is being questioned wrt it’s RPG bona fides. Do other action RPGs get the same discussions about whether they’re RPGs or not?
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Well I mean.. how many other action RPGs are numbered, mainline entries in series that are traditionally not action RPGs and have literally decades of history and fans baked in?
 
I think the biggest thing that makes this feel different from most other action JRPG’s (and particularly previous Final Fantasies) is the lack of multiple playable characters, or any indication of a party that you’ll travel with.

It also doesn’t help that while we can assume there will probably be some kind of exploration between battles, and towns with NPC’s and shops and such, none of that has been shown in the trailers thus far.
 
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While I like my Final Fantasy, this Final Fantasy vs Final Fantasy Final Fantasy makes Final Fantasy into some weird like fantasy game? That's not what the series has been about ever. Final Fantasy Final Fantasy has Final Fantasy tropes in a Final Fantasy world with Final Fantasy lore, but this more generic Final Fantasy isn't Final Fantasy Final Fantasy just Final Fantasy.
 
SunnyDays said:
While I like my Final Fantasy, this Final Fantasy vs Final Fantasy Final Fantasy makes Final Fantasy into some weird like fantasy game? That's not what the series has been about ever. Final Fantasy Final Fantasy has Final Fantasy tropes in a Final Fantasy world with Final Fantasy lore, but this more generic Final Fantasy isn't Final Fantasy Final Fantasy just Final Fantasy.
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I actually agree
 
Inspired by @ILikeFeet 's post in the Famitsu thread, I think it's interesting to revisits this question. We are four months out from FFXVI's release and Square has yet to show us if this game has any RPG depth to it.
 
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Upper limit of reasonable expectations for RPGness

FF7R
Kingdom Hearts 3
God of War Ragnarok
DMC5

Lower limit of reasonable expectations for RPGness

It will be somewhere in the range of FF7R to DMC5, but most likely around the God of War level of RPGness.
 
Previews dropped today and they are focused on the action gameplay. The game releases in 3.5 months and the question still remains, will FFXVI even be an RPG?
 
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fiendcode said:
It's an Action RPG. Like Kingdom Hearts, Trials of Mana, Dragon's Dogma, Elden Ring, Symphony of the Night or Breath of the Wild. ;)
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I'll shoot my shot now. FF16 is not going to be anywhere close to an RPG like any of the games you mentioned. This quote to me says it all when Yoshi-P was asked about mini games and such in the Gematsu interview:

"We have some very dark themes that the story revolves around. We have countries at war—we can’t really have some blitzball matches going on when people are killing each other. And then when you have this hero who’s talking about and driven by revenge be like, ‘I’m gonna go out and fish!’ In that sense, there aren’t those types of light things that are going to detract from the story that we’re trying to tell."
 
Scrawnton said:
I'll shoot my shot now. FF16 is not going to be anywhere close to an RPG like any of the games you mentioned. This quote to me says it all when Yoshi-P was asked about mini games and such in the Gematsu interview:

"We have some very dark themes that the story revolves around. We have countries at war—we can’t really have some blitzball matches going on when people are killing each other. And then when you have this hero who’s talking about and driven by revenge be like, ‘I’m gonna go out and fish!’ In that sense, there aren’t those types of light things that are going to detract from the story that we’re trying to tell."
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Not really sure how a lack of minigames says anything about RPGs though? A lot of my favourite RPGs don’t have lighthearted minigames and the first thing I skipped in FFX was managing an underwater American football team. I didn’t even like the card games in the previous ones either.

Ultimately I think this all comes down to a wider discussion of a lot of AAA action games, action-RPGs and open world games all kinda blending into each other. As rpg mechanics, by definition, gamify advancement and players like that, and if you’re gonna have action gameplay in a big flashy game, you might as well have big flashy action combat inspired by such games. And that’s OK. It’s not like FF hasn’t made people wait half a minute while summon animations play out before. It’s not like there’s a shortage of RPGs to play if your criteria for it is ‘mainline FF doesn’t have the stuff I consider essential any more’. At that point I think some players need to stop considering FF to be the flagship for something it’s been screaming that it doesn’t want to be for a long time. Genres change and drift and coalesce over time, Square just released Octopath 2 just came out a few days ago and is bloody awesome :D
 
PixelKnight said:
It’s not like there’s a shortage of RPGs to play if your criteria for it is ‘mainline FF doesn’t have the stuff I consider essential any more’. At that point I think some players need to stop considering FF to be the flagship for something it’s been screaming that it doesn’t want to be for a long time.
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Yes but us olds can still be sad that the thing we loved all these years is no longer the type of thing we loved.

Like how the Ford Maverick went from being a slick, lightweight sport coupe to being a fuckin pickup truck. Yes, pickups sell better in the modern market but damned if I don't wish a new Maverick could've just been an evolution of the old one 😭
 
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