LogFAQs > #976113955

Metalsonic66 posted...

I thought the battle system was great

Maybe it's just that I haven't played a Final Fantasy game since X on the PS2 years ago, but it just struck me as trying to do too much.

Throughout the game you switch between four characters in your party who have four completely different fighting styles, which you have to learn the nuances of if you want to be effective with them. Switching between them is pretty much mandatory, especially on hard mode, both because the AI your teammates use is dumb as a bag of hammers and because the enemy AI focuses on whoever the player-controlled character is. Each character has their normal attacks, their special ability (like Cloud's punisher stance or Barrett's overcharge), the skills you learn from each weapon (which have to be unlocked by playing a certain way with that weapon); you have to manage their ATB gauge, dodge, guard, or parry enemy attacks at the right moment, figure out when to time your abilities to avoid getting interrupted by the enemy (which, bizarrely, still burns the ATB charge but doesn't trigger the ability); you have to learn what enemies are weak to what attributes and manage your materia accordingly, figure out how to pressure/stagger them... like, it's just trying to do too much and involves too much micromanaging.

If the game had wanted to focus on a solid, flowing real-time combat experience in the vein of something like God of War, I could get behind that, but it doesn't because you spend too much time dicking around in menus during the fight. If it wanted to focus on a more tactical, cerebral, group-based combat, I think that would have been ideal because it's the closest to the original's turn-based combat (a mechanic that's no longer de rigueur, and more's the pity, but whatever), but it doesn't because your AI-controlled allies are morons and also won't use most of their abilities unless you're controlling them. Instead, it tries to blend all those elements together and just feels worse for it.

Funny story, at the same time I was playing FF7R I also played Trials of Mana, another Squeenix remake of an RPG from the 90s with a three-person real time battle system. In my view, Trials was a far superior combat engine (despite the game seemingly being made using whatever bits of spare change Squeenix could dig out of their couch) and winds up being the much more enjoyable experience. That was a game that felt like it properly modernized an old game without abandoning the elements that made it fun.