Honestly, I can only speak for myself, but 7R felt actively bad to play to me. Them trying to split the difference between a turn based RPG and an action game just made everything feel weird and slow, the way animation priority works on it is super unsatisfying and I really don’t click with how a lot of it is paced. Plus it’s been ages since anyone made a proper spectacle-focused turn-based RPG, and this was a missed opportunity, honestly. Persona looks stylish and great, but it’s not going for the same thing.
That, as a result, made me not want to jump into the sequel, because I never finished the original and people were telling me they play the same.
XVI is a bit of a different beast, I just wasn’t in a hurry to play it because… yay another action RPG form Square that probably doesn’t play great, but I did want to check it out, so I waited for the PC port that just came out and got that. Still haven’t gotten into it. I hope it’s good. It seems to be doing fine on Steam, but it also looks extremely expensive to make, so if they say it didn’t work I believe them, I suppose.
I thought remake’s combat system was great and it was my game of the year when I came out. FF16 was also great for me, but it was never going to make everyone happy, it had far too many issues and was a focused action game.
Ff7 rebirth though- holy shit, it was just too fucking long. Too exhausting to play. So much shit to do it was overwhelming and SO, SO much filler. So many terrible, stupid story decisions undercutting emotional moments and jumping the shark on itself. I went from loving it because it was more remake to hating it because of many of the changes and the writing. Just…exhausting.
Square just seem like they are missing hard because FF16 was too focused, and FFRebirth is too big and up it’s own ass.
Them trying to split the difference between a turn based RPG and an action game just made everything feel weird
I haven’t touched any Final Fantasy games once FF-13 did this. It’s an awful system that killed my interest in the franchise. Not to mention how brain dead linear the lever design was.