Final Fantasy moving away from turn-based because it’s “outdated” is peak Square silliness. Have they ever heard of chess, card games, board games, DnD, Civilization, Persona, Dragon Quest, XCOM, Pokemon, Darkest Dungeon? If anything, DMC-style character action games are far more niche.
Funny enough Yoshi P was the one that said turn-based was outdated and he’s worked on DQ before but only the MMO, arcade games, Minecraft clone and a Wii FPS thing. I think it’s pretty obvious he just doesn’t like the genre. DQ11 was the breakthrough hit in the West and he had nothing to do with it.
I’m really worried about the new dragon quest. It’s possibly my favorite series and I’m concerned that 12 is going to be action and not turn based.
I seem to remember them being surprised by the success of Bravely Default, not expecting a deliberately old-school RPG to appeal to modern audiences.
The cynical part of me believes this is performative on their part - they know a game like that will be popular, but it won’t be the most popular thing ever and they won’t make all the money. So, they try to push bigger games that are more easily monetized in hopes that people will just forget their own preferences.
Could also just be their own tastes evolving. I used to love turn-based combat RPGs and the RTS genre but I’m kinda over both of them now. If game makers lose passion for those kinds of games, then the “it won’t appeal” might even be more of a “I’m not into it, so if I do make it, it won’t be very appealing” than a “no one wants this kind of game”.
It turned me off the FFVII remake, which is a shame as I really wanted to experience the original but in a modern style. I guess I may actually boot the original up instead; I wonder if there are mods to make it more playable.
I’ve got the benefit of nostalgia I guess, but I played through the original a few months ago for probably the fifth time in my life and still enjoyed myself. The main things that has aged is the ugly character models, this mod can improve those. Might want to look as some of these as well. You want to play through the original+crisis core first before the remake for… reasons.
