Final Fantasy Gameplay - Parties and Battles

Parties and Battles

Throughout the Final Fantasy series, the most basic element of the gameplay has been that players command a party of characters during battle. The maximum size of the party has been as low as two and as high as seven, depending on the game. Players must face a variety of enemies who continually try to damage the player, as well as afflict "status ailments" upon the characters, such as poisoning them or putting them to sleep. Many of the games feature a random encounter system, where the player is randomly drawn into battle with enemies that are not visible on the map. This remained true of the numbered entries in the series until Final Fantasy XI changed to a system where all enemies are visible as the player explores the game world.

In battle, the characters can select a variety of commands from a menu, such as "Fight", "Magic", "Item", as well as other special skills such as "Steal", "Throw" or "Summon." The battle is won when all enemies are defeated, whilst the game ends if all player characters are unable to fight (either by losing all of their health, or if they are stuck in a state which requires another ally to cure them in order to continue fighting, such as petrification). In some, but not all battles, the player may attempt to flee. While Final Fantasy VI introduced "Desperation Attacks," where characters very low on hit points had the chance to hit an extra strong attack, Yoshinori Kitase created an improved system in Final Fantasy VII called "Limit Breaks". These were powerful attacks that gained strength as the player took damage, and were accompanied by a sophisticated animation. Since then, games in the series allow characters to perform special moves when they fill up a power meter, and this gameplay component has become synonymous with the series.

As the series has gone on, the battle system has evolved from the basic turn-based combat system used in the original Final Fantasy to incorporate more real-time elements. The original turn-based system, with the player characters on the right and the enemies on the left, has been imitated by numerous RPGs. A major departure from this system came in Final Fantasy IV, when Hiroyuki Ito introduced the "Active Time Battle" (ATB) system, where the time-keeping mechanism does not stop whilst the play selects commands. Square filed a Japanese patent application related to the ATB system on July 16, 1991 and a corresponding US application on March 16, 1992. One Japanese patent (JP2794230) and two US patents (US5390937 and US5649862) were granted based on these applications. On the battle screen, each character has an ATB meter that gradually fills, and the player is allowed to issue a command to that character once the meter is full. Because enemies can attack at any time, and the player can lose his turn if he doesn't attack quick enough, urgency and excitement are injected into the combat system. When designing the ATB system, Ito was inspired by Formula One racing. According to Final Fantasy IV's lead designer, Takashi Tokita, "the planner, Hiroyuki Ito, was watching a Formula One race. Seeing all the cars pass each other, we thought of an interesting idea where character speed would differ depending on, I suppose, the type of character it is. So, that's where the initial idea came from."

The ATB system remained the norm until Final Fantasy X implemented a "Conditional Turn-Based" (CTB) system, which slowed gameplay while making it important for the right characters to square off against the right monsters. This system was also utilised in Final Fantasy X's sequel Final Fantasy X-2. Final Fantasy XI altered the system further by instituting a real-time system, where characters continuously attack unless issued another command. Final Fantasy XII introduced the "Active Dimension Battle" system, where the player may issue commands to the characters, or allow them to act automatically with certain behavioral triggers. In Final Fantasy XIII, a completely new version of the ATB system was introduced. Here, the ATB gauge is divided into segments and commands can take up from one segment to the entire bar, so different commands can be mixed and matched as the player sees fit. The ATB bar can also be upgraded to have more segments via the game's Crystarium leveling system. This version of the ATB system returns in Final Fantasy XIII's sequel, Final Fantasy XIII-2.