Wondering if Final Fantasy 14 Mobile will be full of MMO UI clutter like its full-sized counterpart? A first look at gameplay suggests not

Some combat gameplay from the upcoming mobile version of Final Fantasy 14 has been shown off, and it’s cluttered, but not that cluttered.

I think one of the big turn offs for a lot of people when it comes to MMOs is that there’s always just a lot of crap on the screen. There’s so many icons that just don’t make any sense, constant numbers implying that you’re doing damage but the health bar doesn’t go down as quick as you’d like, there’s just a lot to take in! So when it was announced that Final Fantasy 14 is getting a mobile version, eyebrows were raised as to how it would be played, and how much the UI would take up space on the screen. As it turns out, not a massive amount, as some gameplay of the battle system was shown off on Chinese social media site Weibo.

For the most part buttons are shown in the bottom right, with different icons for different jobs, and like many mobile games you just tap ’em to do ’em. Looks pretty simple! Except, of course, there are jobs where you have to use a whole lot of abilities, and it isn’t clear if there’s any way to cycle through the abilities on screen, so it’s entirely possible this version of Final Fantasy 14 has been massively simplified. It’s not even clear if you can walk around during battle or not as the gameplay shows all the different classes just staying in one position, and considering how the original MMO has plenty of attacks that require you to hustle out of danger’s way, that would be quite a radical change.

Still, it looks pretty good all-in, and I’m sure the most passionate of Final Fantasy 14 fans would have a good time no matter what the gameplay systems were like (though it does help when they’re not a mess). There’s still no release date for Final Fantasy 14 Mobile yet, but we do know that it’ll start at the beginning again whenever it does come out.