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

Tencent has released a new job trailer for Final Fantasy 14 Mobile, showing its touchscreen battles for the first time.

The UI for Final Fantasy 14 - as with many MMORPGs - is particularly complex, with each job (or class) having multiple abilities mapped out on a player's hotbar. With the announcement of Final Fantasy 14 Mobile, many players wondered how this would transition to a mobile touchscreen.

Well now we know. The trailer - shared on Chinese social media site Weibo - includes battle animations for all of the nine starting jobs, with their various job actions located in the bottom right of the screen around a large central primary attack used for continuous combos.

Players can then cycle through abilities, with cooldowns clearly displayed, while health and MP are located at the bottom of the screen as always.

It's tidy but, personally, looks far too small. When some jobs have up to 11 abilities to choose from, those ability icons look impossible to accurately select, while the fonts are tiny.

The trailer also does not include any character movement during battle, perhaps suggesting a simplified battle system without positionals (attacks where position around an enemy is vital for dealing damage). This also means there's no dodging of AoE attacks in this trailer, though perhaps that's indicative of a lazy player relying too much on their healer (we all know this from bitter experience).

Speaking of healing, the Scholar and White Mage jobs are the only characters in the trailer to switch targets (all others face a single enemy). It's still unclear how switching between friend and foe will work, though appears to be a quick direct tap of the screen - something else that could get fiddly in the heat of battle.

Still, it's impressive to see running and appears faithful to the original experience. Fans appear particularly impressed by the Monk and Summoner animations.

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

Over in the main game, the latest patch for Final Fantasy 14 was released last month, bringing a Final Fantasy 11-themed raid series.

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