Final Fantasy 14’s battle designer admits they went a little overboard on streamlining fights, especially for melee: ‘Our policy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations was sometimes taken too far’

Anyone who endured Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker as a melee main will know the pain of that expansion’s raids and bosses—gigantic hitboxes, no positionals to hit, and virtually zero downtime to strategise around.

Those things sound like a dream, sure, but in practice they kneecapped any semblance of challenge that makes those classes so fun to play. Every boss was now just a giant, arena-sized punching bag with varying mechanics to learn. At least, that’s how it felt, anyway. Those things were already creeping in during Stormblood and Shadowbringers, but it was Endwalker where the oversimplification really came to a head.

The often easy and homogenised battle design has proven to be one of the 2021 expansion’s biggest criticisms, something which lead battle designer Masaki Nakagawa and his team has been making up for in spades in Dawntrail. After all, even he admits they went a touch far with streamlining fights.

“Prior to [Dawntrail], our policy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations was sometimes taken too far,” Nakagawa told PC Gamer in a recent interview. “And in some cases, even the hurdles and frustrations that existed to make the gameplay more engaging were eliminated, which made them less fun.”