You were still limited on the amount of summons you could do in a battle in FFVII if I remember correctly it was FFVIII where you could spam them endlessly even if that wasn't an optimal tactic to be used in other games where it was just a glass cannon I guess they're strong attacks in like 5 but it's not consistent damage over time while being able to heal matters.
It's like the MTG meta.
You were limited up until you got Master Summon but the limits still didn't justify Bahamut ZERO taking 4 minutes a shot just to ram the damage cap when a basic attack could do the same not long after. FF endgames devolving into ramming the damage cap and becoming a hunt for the actions with the highest number of repetitions has been a problem since FFVI and has never gotten better (sure they've increased the cap to 99999 but that doesn't mean you can't eventually ram that instead (or find a limit break that hits for 18 times a shot)). It doesn't help that Square/Squeenix's only solution to increasing challenge has always been to throw more numbers at it and turning fights into battles of attrition rather than skill.
I actually had no idea what I was talking about I was just trying to create a really long run-on sentence. Although I think I will note that attrition generally doesn't work in the SaGa games since most of the bosses have a fuck-you attack that they'll throw at you if you try it.
Yeah, but then the SaGa series has always been a nearly completely different beast from Final Fantasy (or pretty much any CRPG outside of something like Metal Max). And of course, SaGa games are generally so anti-attrition that they punish you for trying to out-grind the game's difficulty curve.
Oh, I remembered something else I'd like.
More dynamic battle themes, ala Skies of Arcadia. GUST tried to do them recently in Ayesha, but their presence is not nearly as common in RPGs as I wish they would be. We definitely need more themes that change depending on current circumstances in the battle.
Yeah, this is a good point.
With blu-ray, there's more room for audio and a chance for a little more variety. We don't need to hear the same battle theme for 40 hours.
I would say I want little tweaks more than huge design changes.
And if we can be specific, I want Suikoden VI. :P
And speaking of attrition, I want to see more attrition mechanics in my RPGs beyond how many days of food I have left or how much MP do I have left. For instance, show some wear and tear on your ragged team of rugged adventurers. Have the guys grow facial hair and the gals grow leg hair, have long cloaks and skirts grow frayed and tattered as time passes, have characters get wet if they jump into a river to escape a badguy, or look dirty and smelly after the requisite sewer dungeon, have characters put on appropriate attire for climbing mountains, traveling across deserts, trudging across tundras, have your characters get soaked in mud and blood and grime while clashing on a battlefield in the middle of a heavy downpour. Have weapons chip, rust, dull, and stick when poorly maintained, have shields splinter or have arrows stuck into them, and have arrows stick into characters even after they take their health potions, and have armor dented, rusted, or straight up missing chunks.
You know some days, it feels like the game industry has made great strides in the last 25 years, and in others it feels like we haven't gone anywhere at all, and occasionally it feels like we've gone backwards to a certain degree.
