Many have observed how the combat in Final Fantasy 16 leans closer to the fast-paced melees of Devil May Cry over typical action RPG fare, but the game also strips away much of the abstraction typically present in JRPGs, making its combat more synchronous with its storytelling. The JRPG genre is among the most heavily abstracted of any game type that involves battles. The earliest Final Fantasy games depicted two rows of combatants taking turns moving and attacking before returning to their original positions. The most recent entry clearly abandons the classic JRPG format, but more intriguingly, creates a wholistic portrayal that is consistent across battles and cutscenes.
[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Final Fantasy 16.]
Formative JRPGs, including beloved classics like Final Fantasy 6, required an exercise in player imagination. The size of a character sprite compared to a building in a town - to say nothing of the towns viewed on the overworld map - was never meant to be literal. The battles where characters leap forward to attack before returning to their formation was likewise not intended as an actual depiction of combat, but an abstraction of a more chaotic exchange of spells and sword strikes. This aligned with the genre’s tabletop RPG inspirations, where even the basic notion of Hit Points were a broad approximation of luck, hardiness and endurance.
Final Fantasy 16 Aligns Game Mechanics & Story Events
Comparing the Final Fantasy 7 Remake to the original, players require far less imagination. The scale of the city of Midgar matches a sprawling cyberpunk megalopolis, and battles play out as stylish as players might have dreamed. Final Fantasy 16 likewise moves away from requiring imagination, but by making its battle mechanics and its storytelling line up, it also requires less suspension of disbelief. There are no elemental resistances or vulnerabilities in the newest Final Fantasy, allowing players to switch up Eikons based on their preferred combat style, instead of in order to strike at a boss’ weak point. An early event illustrates the game’s mechanics through its story.
When the Eikons Ifrit and Phoenix first clash, resulting in Joshua's apparent death at the hands of Clive, both are fire element Eikons, but they are still shown damaging one another with fire attacks. If such an event took place in a Shin Megami Tensei game, where elemental properties are a pivotal part of battle strategy, it would have been immersion breaking. By including this early illustration in the story, Final Fantasy 16 makes its combat mechanics an extension of its fiction, not an abstraction thereof. Similarly, the scale of damage numbers reflected in Eikon battles compared to those between standard-sized foes matches the intensity one might expect from such exchanges.
Magic is important to Final Fantasy 16’s story, but its effects are conveyed as clearly physical in nature; Shiva summons actual tangible ice, not an ethereal, Platonic ideal of ice. There is no separate “magic defense” statistic, and therefore, only “defense.” Each of these small touches were likely implemented with gameplay in mind, rather than immersion, as they allow easier access for newcomers to the genre, with fewer numbers to juggle on Clive’s statistics page. Players only need to worry about Clive’s attack and defense, along with his ability to stagger foes. Earlier Final Fantasy games sometimes separated Dodge and Defense, but dodging is now a matter of player skill.
FF16's Combat Makes Its Story Less Abstract
While some may argue over whether Final Fantasy 16 is a real Final Fantasy game, if players accept that Final Fantasy can be an action RPG, it still fulfills the franchise’s criteria. Few would argue that 16-bit classic action RPGs like the original Star Ocean or Tales of Phantasia are not “true RPGs.” Final Fantasy 15 also featured real-time action, but its successor’s smooth, kinetic combat makes FF15 feel clunky in comparison. The absence of a consistent party, or the ability to in some way control human party , is off-putting to others. The original JRPG, the first Dragon Quest, did not feature a party at all, however.
The key thing that sets Final Fantasy 16 apart from other JRPGs is not the absence of a party, or even its real-time combat, but the move away from abstraction. In that sense, Final Fantasy 16 undoes everything genre fans know about JRPGs, a genre previously defined by abstraction and player imagination, in its change to a “what you see is what you get” paradigm, with no separation between its story’s metafictional reality and the game’s combat engine.
