I thought it was about time that I shared some thoughts on the design in Project FoM. I’m not going to write too much and I’ll just stick to one small feature this time. As we progress further in the development, I’ll be sharing more technical and detailed descriptions of the mechanics and design thoughts I/we have.
Today I wanted to talk a little bit about one of the main features of any good JRPG… The combat. In many regards there are certain combat mechanics that make up a traditional JRPG that have become staple features in “every” JRPG, and certainly we will have those too.
When we decided we wanted to make a homage to JRPG games, we wanted the combat for the game to give the player the same fundamental experience as the one in Final Fantasy VII, but take these tried and true mechanics, improve and add many new elements to give a new dimension to them.
One of the things we wanted to do was to have the player character party consist of 6 characters, but divided them in to teams of two and two, each team consisting of a Warrior and a Protector. This is only one of many features we did to introduce more tactics to the combat. This forces the player to think about how they want to fight their battles and use their characters, as they have to control the Warrior and Protector as one, and only perform one of their abilities each turn.
Another addition we have made is that, as the player characters level up and gain new abilities, their abilities lists will grow longer. We designed it such that the player will not be able to use all of the characters abilities in combat, but only a limited selection. Think of it like in any of the Pokémon games where you can have hundreds of Pokémon, but only use 6 at a time. Again, the player will have to think tactically and select the abilities with care and build the party up as they like. Of course the player can at anytime outside of a combat scenario change the abilities to adapt to their needs.
There are a couple of other things I want to talk about regarding the combat, but I think I’ll save the best and more unique features for a future update. If anyone has any questions or suggestions on what I should write, please leave a comment or send me a mail. I would like to hear from you.
- Matt (Mattis)
Appears pretty interesting. Tracking this now, looking forward to updates!
Thank you very much :) I have already planned 4-5 more in-depth posts on the combat. And a dozen at least other topics!
I like the graphics, but not the hand cursor. Tracking!
Thanks! I should probably have written that the illustration is an early concept by our Art Director Fridtjof (Frits), and its definitely not final ;) For one, it's missing some of the core combat mechanics!