Final Fantasy 16: Square Enix’s Biggest Development Challenge Was The Combat

Combat in Final Fantasy games is a difficult task. One hand you probably want to appeal the fans of series and the other you want new players. But it’s impossible to please everyone when making big changes like developer Creative Business Unit III is doing with Final Fantasy XVI – using a real-time action combat system that couldn’t be further from the series’ classic turn-based roots. 

As someone who loves the franchise’s turn-based format and its more action-forward design as of late, and as someone who’s played FFXVI for more than five hours at this point, I’m quite pleased with the combat. It’s fast-paced, action-heavy, and perhaps most importantly, fitting of this world and these characters. I especially like the singular focus on Clive, as you never control any of your party members (although you give combat-related orders to Clive’s dog companion, Torgal). 

Designing this combat was the biggest challenge of FFXVI’s development, according to producer Naoki Yoshida (the same Yoshida that’s the director of Final Fantasy XIV). 

“Probably the biggest challenge had to do with designing the battle system and going into full real-time action,” Yoshida tells me within Square Enix’s Tokyo, Japan, office building. “We’ve mentioned in the past that with Final Fantasy XVI, we wanted to bring in a new generation of gamers to the Final Fantasy series, and one of our main focuses during early development was how to do this.” 

Yoshida said CBUIII was full of developers who loved turn-based gaming and even grew up playing them. The team decided to create FFXVI by asking themselves which games younger players are playing and what they enjoy. It turned out that a lot of the teams’ answers were action games. 

“Instead of going back to turn-based, we said, ‘Okay, this is a chance for us to challenge ourselves to try to do something that the series had never done but that we want to really try to do, and that’s moving to the full action-based system,’” Yoshida continues. “There was always the option to maybe try a hybrid type of system where we have action and turn-based elements, but again, rather than trying that and having something that’s not complete and not satisfying, we decided to focus fully on just bringing the action.” 

When FFXVI launches on PlayStation 5 exclusively on June 22, you’ll be able to experience the same action. 

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