Final Fantasy 14 Mobile mission trailer shows battles for the first time

Tencent has released a new trailer for Final Fantasy 14 Mobile, featuring touchscreen combat for the first time.

Final Fantasy 14’s user interface, like many MMORPGs, is particularly complex, with each job (or class) having multiple abilities displayed on the player’s hotbar. Since the announcement of Final Fantasy 14 Mobile, many players have been wondering how the transition to mobile touchscreen will work.

Well now we know. The trailer, posted on Chinese social media site Weibo, includes combat animations for all nine starting missions, with the various actions located in the bottom right corner of the screen around a large central primary attack used for continuous combos.

Players can then switch between abilities, with cooldowns clearly displayed and health and MP located at the bottom of the screen as always.

It’s neat, but personally I think it’s too small. With up to 11 abilities selectable on some missions, it feels like these ability icons are impossible to select accurately and the fonts are tiny.

The trailer also doesn’t include any character movement during combat, possibly suggesting a simplified combat system without positional attacks (attacks where position around an enemy is vital to dealing damage). This also means that there is no dodging of AoE attacks in this trailer, although perhaps this is an indication of a lazy player relying too heavily on their healer (we all know this from bitter experience).

Speaking of healing, the Scholar and White Mage professions are the only characters in the trailer that switch targets (everyone else faces the same enemy). It’s still unclear how switching between friend and foe will work, although it appears to involve quickly directly tapping the screen – something else that might prove awkward in the heat of battle.

Still, the running is impressive and feels true to the original experience. Fans were especially impressed by the animation of the Monk and Summoner.

Final Fantasy 14 Mobile will be a free-to-play game without gacha and will follow the base game A Realm Reborn.

As for the main game, the latest patch for Final Fantasy 14 was released last month, featuring a series of Final Fantasy 11-themed raids.

Back at Gamescom, producer and director Naoki Yoshida discussed criticism of the latest Dawntrail expansion and working with community feedback.