There’s been an undercurrent of opinion, ever since Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took audiences by surprise earlier this year, that the approach taken by the turn-based fantasy RPG is the cure for everything that ails Final Fantasy. It delivers an old-school take on the genre that’s much less flawed than both Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, garnering rave reviews, GOTY buzz, and impressive sales for a first-time studio. Final Fantasy fans have been jealous.
“Jesus, I see what you’ve done for Clair Obscur and I want that for us,” you can almost hear them pleading. There’s been a search for what the Square Enix franchise, which Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur was inspired by, can learn from the new kid on the block. For some long-time fans, one of the takeaways has been that the Japanese series should return to its roots as a turn-based game. Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida was asked about that at Anime Expo 2025.
“With this question of turn-based versus action, it tends to isolate the gameplay to just the battle system,” he responded. “That doesn’t take into account what kind of game the creators want to deliver to players. For example, based on a certain graphical quality we want to present to our players, or the narrative we want to deliver to our players, it relates to how we set up the game’s systems around it.”
Yoshida continued, “This includes the battle system, game design, and gameplay feel. It’s not a clear-cut answer, whether it will become all turn-based, or if it’s going to become more action-based. [I’m] not necessarily going to be on Final Fantasy 17, so we also don’t want to obstruct or limit our future director or whomever will be producing the games like 17 or even 18. We don’t want to put them on a rail.”
The answer helped elucidate all of the considerations that go into designing a sequel. You can’t just pick things from a list and start sticking them together. Each element, from the graphical style to the type of story being told to the gameplay mechanics, needs to compliment one another and act in harmony. Ideally, each thing might flow organically into the next, making each new decision feel like a natural consequence of the last rather than something being arbitrarily inserted to please fans or shareholders.
Something I think a lot of the conversations lording Clair Obscur over Final Fantasy’s head miss are that combat isn’t where the latter has faltered in recent years. Final Fantasy XVI’s arcade-like real-time action is flashy, precise, and incredibly satisfying. The only real shortcomings were that it didn’t dive deeper into some of the underlying systems—more Eikon ability synergies, elemental damage, more varied equipment options—and it wasn’t hard enough . Each of those is easily iterated on in a sequel, as the series has done throughout its history.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth offers an even bigger rebuttal to the turn-based question in my mind because that’s essentially still what it is. Final Fantasy combat has long operated on a continuum between static and real-time, going back to the series’ introduction of the ATB system to let enemies act independent of player decision-making. This is why Square Enix often refers to Rebirth as a command combat system. While you can move around in battles and positioning is important, the most important tasks are all automated by the characters themselves and carried out by selecting them from a menu. There are dodges, parries, synergies, summons, and all the rest, but at its core it’s already working off the same logic as Clair Obscur’s combat system, and in much more robust ways.
It’s perfectly fine if fans just want a new Final Fantasy that marries expensive graphics with a traditional turn-based system, though there are no shortage of other RPGs out there, including many from Square Enix itself, that already cater to those classic sensibilities. But the combat itself is far from the weakest part of the modern entries in the franchise. What’s actually holding it back, without a doubt, are the stories. I’m not going to relitigate every turn in each of the sprawling adventures release over the last decade. I’d argue Final Fantasy storytelling has been on the decline since the end of the PS2 generation with FFXII, a still-stellar game for plenty of other reasons. Rebirth and FFXVI both had glaring issues, though.
Rebirth is a world-class game in so many ways, from the cinematic presentation to the maximalist open-world design, but it bungles many of the original source material’s most important moments without providing interesting new interpretations, tensions, or epiphanies in return. The Gold Saucer section is a perfect encapsulation. The theme park is beautifully and entertainingly recreated and chock full of fun distractions. But Barret’s backstory of having his YIMBY idealism exploited by Shinra to turn his hometown into a Mako-harvesting dump gets short shrift and feels hollowed out. His encounter with Dyne, the friend whose life he accidentally ruined, is overshadowed by a cartoony infusion of clear-cut moralism. It was one of many narrative misfires up and through Rebirth’s bizarre ending.
FFXVI faltered even more frequently. For every great character moment between Clive, Joshua, and Cid, there was something in the larger narrative about geopolitical rivalries and enslaved magic users that was either straight-up dumb or borderline offensive. It never quite grapples with the stakes of its grim worldbuilding before eventually ditching it all for some old-school Final Fantasy guy-in-the-sky deus ex machina shit that undermines everything players had previously become so emotionally invested in. I say this with complete love for the game as a whole, which I am currently playing a second time, but FFXVI lives up to its Game of Thrones influences with a third act that’s every bit as disappointing as the end of the HBO series.
My take away from Clair Obscur, then, is not that RPGs need to be turn-based to find love again, but that even a turn-based RPG can win over modern audiences if the story, acting, and presentation are all top notch. There is no reason the next Final Fantasy can’t do all of those things on top of harnessing the franchise’s current combat systems. For everyone else, well, Dragon Quest XII shouldn’t be that far away.
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