Final Fantasy: Building The Perfect Sequel (1 Feature From Each Game)

Everybody loves Pokémon. Nintendo and Game Freak’s series will soon enter its eighth generation through the release of Sword and Shield, taking the number of capturable beasts to over 1000. Many games have tried to replicate and simplify the series’ formula of catching creatures and raising them in battle, including Final Fantasy XIII-2.

With just two playable characters (Serah and Noel) featured in the game, the party could be filled through the recruitment of a monster as the third member.

A surprisingly deep system, each monster captured could play one of the six ‘character class’ roles, with items used to enhance their stats and abilities, infusions with other monsters conducted to make them stronger still and adornments to make even the most vicious Behemoth look cute.

The availability of more than 150 monsters to collect (though no more than one of each ‘type’ could be held at a time) also made for a sidequest with substantial longevity, as like any Pokémon Trainer, a perfectionist would want to catch ‘em all.

A replication of this system could tie in to either the aforementioned Monster Arena or a Job System, as collected beasts could be trained in the arena and then called into battle by the Beastmaster job, which is frequently one of the more underutilised classes in any of the games in which they appear by virtue of having little to no skills.