Quote Originally Posted by MikkoAkure View Post
What you described in your first paragraph is literally Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (minus pretty graphics) which is already a direction that Final Fantasy has gone into. If the recent forays into action combat didn’t sell well, the SE would probably be more inclined to change it up, but this looks to be the direction they’re going.

Turn-based gameplay is now considered “retro” and “niche” and I don’t think there’s been a AAA title in the past 15 years that used it.
Divinity II and Persona 5 are, again, rather far from small, low-budget games. They were both the full $60 on release. 3 years later, the collector's edition of Divinity 2 is still $90, and the base game $45. Its prequel, back when the studio was borderline indie had a budget of over 4.5 mil euros, but that seems a small fraction of D2's -- I haven't seen the exact numbers -- though the game's release quarter was apparently ridiculously profitable.

I get that you dislike Turn Based, but it's far from something games just "get away with". It's a system still being meaningfully reiterated upon, to great success.