@MrNinosan

"@crimson
1-3 + 10, yes.
The rest? "Semi turn-based"."

That's my point, mechanics may be different under the hood, such as ATB, but essentially you're still doing an attack via menu and waiting for your turn to make another attack. ATB just means the enemies can attack you while you're sitting there taking forever to choose an action.

1 through 10, hell even 12 and 13, do not radically change the genre of the core-based battle. That's my comparison with a Whopper, Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, etc. I used that analogy for the very reason of anticipating your response. The battle system may have changes, but they are all still a "burger". You are still waiting for a time meter to fill after you make an action in all FF games up to 13... except 11, but you know what I mean.

"However, Final Fantasy has always strived for evolution, and ever since FF1 the combat system has evolved more and more and where we withing FFXIII went past old "classic" turn based to what we see today, more action oriented."

Strived for evolution while staying true to it's core. Yes, there's changes in settings, tweaks to the combat, but for the most part aside from aesthetics and turn-based mechanics they essentially were a "Final Fantasy game" where you followed a pretty similar structure of moving through a world for narrative, getting into random encounters or encounters in general and then having a menu to choose your actions while you waited for you turn again.

It was not that every FF game changed the genre of what it was and if each FF game strived for evolution like how you're trying to pitch it, then Yoshi P wouldn't have addressed why they're taking such a radical departure. So, no, FF games for the most part played very much like FF games albeit 10, 12, and 13 tried to different things in terms of 3D environments and combat. You could still identify them through core mechanics as being still very Final Fantasy.

Yoshi P even stated he wanted to make the changes because he couldn't understand how a modern crowd would want to sit there and choose an action like firing a gun via a menu and wait for that action to happen. His solution was to go to a genre that incidentally isn't accessible by everyone... which is so ironic.

And no, not all genres change the genre that they were established in.

Take Shin Megami Tensei or Persona, they're still turn-based after all these years.

A racing game like Gran Turismo doesn't change into a cart racer because modern gamers want to play more Mario Kart than a sim racer. COD hasn't turned into a turn-based RPG for combat. Resident Evil didn't turn into a 3D brawler.

My point is FF for most of the entire series was a turn-based JRPG where you chose actions in combat via a menu and went forward through a world unraveling a narrative. That's also why you have such divisive opinions on FF games like 12, 15, and 16. Less so with previous entries. You may hear people not liking the junction system in FF8, but it still played like a FF game. You may hear people from FF5 complaining that you don't get a job system in FF7, but it still played like an FF game.

So, my point is "mechanics" added to a "core battle system" is not the same as changing the "genre" of game in a battle system (I.e. the whole burger and pizza analogy). That drastic change is what becomes divisive and it's not something that's been in the majority of FF titles.

Make sense?