Final Fantasy Could Be Sitting on a Gold Mine with One Spin-Off Genre

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 29, 2025 4 Views 7 Min Read
Final Fantasy Could Be Sitting on a Gold Mine with One Spin-Off Genre
Views: 0

Final Fantasy is a franchise that needs little introduction at this point. Just about anyone embedded in the world of video games has some level of familiarity with the franchise, especially due to its genre-and tone-hopping nature: there’s essentially an Final Fantasy game for everyone, whether they prefer turn-based combat, action-RPG mechanics, or high-concept, flamboyant storytelling.

But even the most prolific and wide-spanning franchises have their blind spots. Indeed, there are a number of ideas, both on the gameplay and narrative fronts, that Final Fantasy has yet to explore, which is part of what makes it such an exciting IP to follow. Its versatility and tenuous connective tissue between entries offers Final Fantasy more flexibility than other franchises, which have to contend with audience expectations, heritage, genre conventions, and the like. It’s surprising, then, that Square Enix hasn’t seemed to go too far beyond the franchise’s traditional JRPG and action-RPG roots, exploring other popular genres beyond commercial flops like Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier. Moving forward, there’s one action-RPG subgenre that could be worth exploring.

Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core Cloud Strife Ending

Related


Why Final Fantasy 7’s Cloud is the Series’ Most Tragic Protagonist

Final Fantasy 7’s Cloud is known for many things, but his convoluted backstory is perhaps the most interesting, and tragic, aspect of his character.

It Might Be Time for a Final Fantasy Musuo Game

The Musuo Genre Would Be a Surprisingly Great Fit for Final Fantasy

Musuo games, sometimes called “Warriors” games due to their Dynasty Warriors roots, are designed around a few key pillars:

  • Multiple playable characters/weapon types
  • Large-scale siege combat
  • One vs. 1,000 power fantasy gameplay

Each of these pillars would be well represented within the Final Fantasy universe, at least when looking at common design threads across entries. Take, for instance, the concept of multiple playable characters. This is something that Final Fantasy is more than familiar with, both in the context of turn-based games and real-time combat, such as what’s seen in the Final Fantasy 7 remake saga. Those games may be considered exemplary instances of a diverse character roster in an action-RPG, as Barrett plays remarkably differently from Tifa, Tifa feels very different from Cloud, and so on.

Then there are the siege combat and power fantasy elements, which are perhaps a bit less consistent than the character roster and weapon types, but have nevertheless appeared in the franchise before. Final Fantasy Type-0, for example, features siege-like missions, where control over the battlefield through tactical gameplay is a large focus, and pitting the player against seemingly insurmountable odds is basically the bread-and-butter of most of the series’ narratives. A musuo spin-off could crank these systems up, as it were, introducing a far more fast-paced and spectacular gameplay loop that is still couched within FF tradition.

What a Final Fantasy Musuo Game Could Look Like, and What Challenges It Could Face

When conceptualizing this theoretical spin-off, Square Enix would be faced with an essential question early on: should it be a new Final Fantasy story, like the other mainline games, or should it link to an already-established chapter, like Final Fantasy 7? The benefits of the latter option are obvious, as it would allow the game to have a strong base of well-known, well-wrought characters, monsters, settings, et cetera. But of course, these games are prized for their narratives, sometimes above all else, and injecting a wholly new story, one consisting of large-scale battles, could clash with the existing narrative or, even worse, trivialize it.

There’s also the possibility of such a game being a crossover, incorporating recognizable characters and concepts from various different Final Fantasy games with the goal of creating a more robust, diverse experience, but this may be better in theory than in practice. Final Fantasy games are separated by lines that aren’t usually crossed outside a few notable exceptions (Kingdom Hearts), so a musuo mash-up could be a can of worms that’s not worth opening. But these are just details: the core concept, that being a marriage of Final Fantasy and musuo conventions, seems like an easy layup for the series.

Source link