Final Fantasy 16: Why It Became An Action Game And How Square Handled Difficulty

Naoki Yoshida went on a panel with localization director Koji Fox at the recently concluded PAX East to share information on Final Fantasy 16.

Naoki explained the battle system for Final Fantasy 16, and this is where the burning question of this new game comes in. Why did Square Enix drop the Active Time Battle system the franchise had used for so long, in favor of a real time system, making Final Fantasy 16 an action game?

Naoki explained that, of course, the Final Fantasy developers love turn based gameplay, and the Active Time Battle system. They also grew up on those kinds of games. But, they also love action games.

Square Enix’s Creative Unit 3 used Final Fantasy 16 as an opportunity to challenge themselves. Making a full action game would show the world the potential that the Final Fantasy series has.

If you think about it, this sort of genre shift isn’t unheard of or original. Nintendo, famously, turned Metroid fans on their head when they made Metroid Prime the first 3D shooter in the franchise. Similarly, Bethesda shocked the world when they turned a very rigid RPG in the Fallout games, and made it a sprawling open world shooter with Fallout 3. These risks have historically paid off, sometimes, and given us new classics.

However, Creative Unit 3 wants this game to be something that everyone can play, including people who aren’t good at action games.

To demonstrate this point, Naoki actually showed off some combat gameplay to demonstrate how the game can be made easier and more accessible for all players.

First, they demonstrated an entire battle with a Storm Panther. Naoki showed that you can easily view the gear you have equipped from the pause menu, and you can cycle through your equipped Eikons in real time by simply pressing L2.

You press R1 to evade, and you don’t have to worry about your companions. Jill and Torgal will fight automatically with you. There doesn’t seem to be any way to direct their actions, which highlights how it splits apart from its predecessor.

Enemies have a will gauge, and when you drop that gauge down to zero, they are downed, but still have health. This gives you an opportunity to attack them unopposed and whittle the rest of their health away.

The aid that Creative Unit 3 has added for accessibility is called Timely Items. There are five Timely items shown in the demo, in a pause menu:

• Ring of Timely Healing
• Ring of Timely Assistance
• Ring of Timely Strikes
• Ring of Timely Evasion
• Ring of Timely Focus

So the game only has one base difficulty. The player can customize how much difficulty they contend with by using these Timely Items. We are shown three ring slots, so it seems you can’t use them all at once for overpowered play.

They demonstrate two of these items and explain their effects. The Ring of Timely Strikes simplifies attacks so that you only have to press one button multiple times to get long combos out. The Ring of Timely Focus, on the other hand, enables bullet time gameplay. Although your enemies won’t shoot at you with guns, time will slow down when they strike so that you can successfully evade their attack. A contextual menu will pop up when they do, indicating how much time you have to evade, and that you need to press R1 to do that evade.

As you can imagine, using these items makes battles considerably easier. In fact, with the R1 and the square attack button, you can play the game one handed on a DualSense.

But then, one final question might be lingering in your head. How is Final Fantasy 16 still an RPG?

In fact, Creative Unit 3 has deliberately held back sharing what RPG elements Final Fantasy 16 will have. Naoki ends the talk by promising that we will learn these details on a later date.

Final Fantasy 16 will be released on the PlayStation 5 on June 22, 2023. A PC port is also expected to be announced in the future. You can learn more by reading this post about the panel, which will also link to other articles based on it.