Quick reminder: I've only played at launch, so it's possible that some of my gripes might have gotten fixed either through patches or the release of Intergrade. Assuming I get my hands on a PS5, I'll probably wind up replaying this before Part 2 is released, so my opinion might change at that point.
Spoiled baby on ps5, load times are neeeeeearrrrrrrrrrrly nonexistant, and looks flawless to me. To be fair to the ps4 though, the load times always sucked on that console from the first time I got mine.
Spinning rust + Unreal Engine 4 = aaaaaaaaaaa
To be fair, the load times (that is to say the amount of time it takes you to slog through the loading screen) were actually quite good compared to other PS4 games. It just took it a while to flesh out the world.
Having done a crosslash limit break to an enemy, to have it casually take 3 steps back...I don't use those style limit breaks unless I have em rooted. I will not defend the system, however with the stagger system, and whatever the state before stagger is called that the enemy doesn't move, and ice magic, there's options to set up a limit break hitting.
You can definitely set it up to make it a guarantee (and I often did that) but the inconsistency with how it worked makes it feel like a bug.
You don't even need to die, they can just bitch slap you and knock you over and you lose the mp, take the damage, and don't cast the spell. Pretty annoying, makes you think more before you act.
In a way, yes, but the enemies also have a tendency to bumrush the active character. One of the primary issues I had is that I'd set up combat with Cloud, and the second I switched to Aerith they'd shove his spiky ass aside and immediately start wailing on her.
The other issue is that the threadbare party AI that the game does have (and yes, I realize it's by design) has just enough autonomy that it tends to wander away from where you placed the character, leading to situations where I'd switch to Barret only to have him facing a wall on the other side of the arena, run him back into position, and when I switch back to Cloud he'll be on the opposite side of the arena admiring a lamp. Again, maybe this was patched, but during my playthrough it happened enough to become a pattern and made it feel like a cat herding simulator.
I do agree with you, but also somewhat disagree? It's annoying yes, but that to me just forces me to dodge/block/pick my spot better. The one part where having other party members feels "good" to me. Barret is stunned, auto swap to someone else to build some atb to toss him a heal or recovery or something. Being stunned doesn't mean "sit there and do nothing" in this game because you can switch to another party member, and that feels pretty fluid to me.
The problem I ran into is that I'd swap, only to find my other characters in seemingly random positions. Aerith was fairly well-behaved, but I'd often find Barret admiring the wall and generally being far enough out of range that the stun would wear off by the time I steer him back into the fray.
I actually distinctly remember why I bought this up in the first place. The part that this happened was where the only party members were Cloud and Aerith, and in those instances combat would
open with a ~5 second stun on Cloud, followed by all of the enemies rushing Aerith. Once in a while, sure, but it got kind of formulaic. Might have just been poor luck, but still.
This part is one of the bigger problems with the games combat as I play more. I was fighting Shiva, and I would try to dodge certain attacks and it wouldn't work and I'd get hit, so I'd start blocking which works great, except that other attack you can't block. Or that one attack you can block, but then it explodes and you have to evade it. This is fine the third time you fight her and understand "block this, dodge this, don't get hit by that, block then evade that" but the game doesn't properly communicate a blockable spell from one you need to dodge. They could easily make clever use of spell graphics or sound effects to communicate this to the player as a lot of games do. Tekken 7 is a 3d fighting game, you have attacks you can sidestep, and there's attacks which can hit lateral movement. Said attacks that hit stepping, you see it with a white swoosh communicating that this attack is hitting those lateral movements. So when you get hit by it, you can see as the person getting hit, what they did, and can use that information to counter it later.
Exactly. I couldn't agree more.
That's one of the main reasons I feel that it has an identity crisis. It's kind of a weird mish-mash of classic JRPG and action RPG tropes that occasionally clash. When it's on-point it feels amazing (like I said, I really loved the combat system for the first few hours despite some of the weird little AI quirks and such) but I feel that the more difficult fights just wind up exposing those cracks.
I'm sure the second part will probably feel a lot more refined. The first one kinda got caught in development hell, after all. I'm sure that didn't do it any favors.
If I have to say what the biggest flaw to this game is right now, the combat isn't "bad" as it is EXTREMELY UNINTUITIVE. It is OFFENSIVELY unintuitive. With that, it's very hard to even grasp the "correct" way to play the game, and the game not exactly being easy, and having quite a few hard bosses (HELL HOUSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE), it's very easy to be frustrated. That combined with the fact that I am an old man who likes turn based games and final fantasy hasn't been like that since the early ps2 era. I understand why it is real time, because the kids don't like turn based, and I know more than a few people that wouldn't touch a game if it was taking turns, if that game isn't called pokemon...
At least Squeenix has been dipping their toes back into that well with stuff like Bravely Default (traditional FF-style) and Triangle Strategy (FFT-style).
Apparently Intergrade allows you to use turn-based controls for FF7:R's Normal difficulty. Have you tried messing around with that at all?
And the funny thing is that old tech demo that looked too good to be any game I'd be playing in my lifetime doesn't even hold a candle to what they actually released...on a last generation console, let alone a modern one.
Technology is a funny thing, eh?
It's going to be interesting to see what part 2 looks like, seeing as it's going to be exclusively on current gen consoles. The screenshots of part 1 on PS5/PC look noticeably better, but designing it from the ground up for newer hardware can make a pretty substantial difference.
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