Quote Originally Posted by Wilksha View Post
Final Fantasy at it's core is a fantasy game, look at its title and Fantasy is in it. When I think fantasy I think colourful extravagant and flashy skills magic and such with a dark evil to be conquered. So far the flashy skills and magic I enjoy it so far, though the casting animation looks kinda weird. My only issue is the damage text not being over inflated with now what cause the damage being with the visual display. Luckily, at least I think I remember it being there in XIV and know it was in XI, you can turn it on or off. I might turn it off since it looks a little out of place now that it tacks on the action that caused it as long as it wasn't a regular attack.
If your worried about things being too flashy, your into the wrong hobby. Games tend to be flashy for things that we cannot do in reality. Though I'm sure if you want, there will likely be a turn off animations options in the filters somewhere.
Bread and butter attacks in FF games - not flashy.
Cloud's Braver - not flashy. One single, well-placed lense flare.
Tifa's Beat Rush - a few small fiery pummel marks
Kain's Jump - He just jumps really high, with some motion blurring effects
Freya's Jump - Jumps, throws lance

These were all also turn based games, where a single ability occured in isolation, not games where multiple party members attacked at the same time, or multiple monsters attacked you at the same time. Even if FFXIV had the same level of flashy abilities (it doesn't it has more, bigger ones) the result would not be the same, simply because of how much more frequent they are in this system.