The Dream Of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Has Been Fulfilled
Anime-style fighting commence
Final Fantasy VII Advent Children came out back in 2005 according to IMDB and is a sequel to the original game with Final Fantasy legends Tetsuya Nomura, Kazushige Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase all credited in some shape or form with making the movie. It’s a movie I love dearly, especially after seeing the extended version of it but I wouldn’t say it’s a fantastic movie if I looked at it more objectively. The story and voice acting are messy in places but it has some incredibly fast-paced anime-style action with some of the fighting even happening in the air and the visuals are stunning.
I watched this movie as a young teen and the fighting blew my mind at the time. I remember thinking I wanted a Final Fantasy game with a battle system like this. I felt at the time and also believe as an adult that the style of fighting was something the Final Fantasy veterans at Square Enix dreamed of achieving with the games one day.
It’s why I think that for the most part, the turn-based battle systems are gone in the core titles. In part to achieve a wider audience and in part to achieve the Advent Child dream. I love the turn-based systems and will regularly replay those games but I am also open to trying new experiences and it’s one of the many reasons why Final Fantasy is my favourite game series of all time because they aren’t afraid to constantly try new things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t quite land but rarely is it so outwardly bad, especially within the core series.
It's clear however with the games that released since this movie that Square has been trying to get into that action space for a while. The impact of this can be seen as early as Final Fantasy XII although that is probably more coincidental as it came out the following year of the movie’s release and was like quite far into development at that point. Final Fantasy XII’s combat system was to set up what they called Gambits to control all members of the party so they conduct their attacks in an automated way. You were also able to run around the enemies too rather than just standing in one place the whole time.
Final Fantasy XV then continued this trend where the combat is quite action-oriented and fast-paced even if it is a little basic. Warp strike allowed you to zip around the battlefield getting closer to your enemies and then unleashing your attacks and abilities and sometimes working with your team members to unleash special moves or their abilities. With the post-launch updates you could also play with these other characters too in battle but regardless you were only controlling one main character at a time because of how action-oriented everything had gotten. Sometimes you might get flung around and then need to use warp strike to get straight back into the action similar to what would happen in Advent Children.
The ideas from this game then continued into Final Fantasy VII Remake which has in my opinion an infinitely better battle system. I remember pre-launch the marketing said you would need to control all your party members in a battle to get through it. I genuinely thought that was hyperbole but I was wrong. In most battles, it was wise to switch between the party members because they each had different attack styles and abilities which would be valuable. For example, switching to Aerith or Barret meant you could use ranged attacks which Cloud and Tifa just didn’t have. You were also able to give them commands for example to cast Cure allowing a combination of the old and new but still very much an action-style gameplay. You would still be running around and attacking although it felt a little slower than XV’s combat from what I remember. The drop in speed is deliberate though, to give a little more weight to the gameplay but most importantly to allow you to be significantly more strategic than XV. I think it worked incredibly well and is one of my favourite systems in the series. When you fight Sephiroth in this game, it does remind me of when Cloud fights Sephiroth and Kadaj in the movie. It’s also worth noting that Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII also had action gameplay akin to Kingdom Hearts.
Even Strange of Paradise uses the Team Ninja’s talents to emulate fluent gameplay using the basis of their game Nioh and From Software’s Soulsborne games as a framework. Whilst it is a sort of spin-off game and a sort of different take on the original game at the same time, it to me still reads as trying to achieve Advent Children’s dream.
In comes Final Fantasy XVI the latest entry in the series at the time of writing which in my opinion is the most action-oriented game in the series. The combat director of it is someone who has worked on Devil May Cry 5 combat. Furthermore during the live stream during Summer Game Fest it was revealed that the developers for Kingdom Hearts and Platinum Games all have had a hand in developing the fighting mechanics in XVI which for me is one of the strongest and more compelling in the series. You can assign different attacks and elemental abilities of Eikons in this game and people more talented than me can string long chains of attacks together. It not only reminds me of Devil May Cry or Bayonetta but it even reminds me a little of the combos in fighting games. It can be as basic or as deep as you want it to be.
I often see discourse online, especially Reddit where people don’t like the combat style of gameplay in these later games. I completely understand why as it’s not to everyone’s taste but then again what in this world is for everyone? I think for the most part Final Fantasy fans understand that even if they are disappointed. Where I think it sometimes goes too far however is when people state that these recent games aren’t true Final Fantasy games because of the gameplay. I have played every mainline title in the series and several spin-off games, and I think it’s unfair to say that. This franchise has always been exciting for me because of how different things are in every possible way from game to game. It’s clear as well with how old Advent Children now is that Final Fantasy veterans at Square wanted this style of gameplay for the longest time but technology has held them back for so long. I have so much love and faith in this franchise, even during some of the rougher periods. Now we are at a place where that Advent Children’s dream has finally been fulfilled after so long in the last few games and honestly I think that is kind of beautiful.
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