Final Fantasy VII Remake’s protagonist’s Cloud Strife’s arms are weedy. He’s barely smuggling ping pong balls under his sleeves, let alone bowling balls like fellow eco-terrorist Barrett. How on earth, then, does he manage to wield a near 100-pound, six-foot broadsword with such ease?
My experience with Final Fantasy VII extends to the party escaping Midgar in the original and a playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake, so, in short, I don’t know. Maybe he fell in a vat of his planet’s liquid lifeblood and subject of his eco-terrorism, Mako, and now has super strength to complement those smouldering turquoise peepers. But, what I do know is that it’s a joy to enable.
Remake has moved away from the turn-based battles of the original in favour of a Kingdom Hearts style battle system. You control Cloud, or one of his colleagues, in real-time. Attacking with square and dodging with the circle button. Unlike controlling Sora, though, when you choose a command from the on-screen menu, combat pauses, giving you a moment to breathe and contemplate your next move. Executing commands, be they abilities, magic or using items, depletes your Active Time Battle (ATB) meter which you can only replenish by battling in real-time. It’s an outstanding, symbiotic system, and you must utilise both elements to thrive.
Layered on this is the ‘Stagger’ system. By attacking an enemy and punishing its weaknesses, you build its stagger meter. Maxing it out turns said adversary into a veritable punching bag, unable to attack and susceptible to enhanced damage. The loop of attacking in real-time to build ATB, employing ATB commands to stagger foes and executing them as they lay limp is immensely satisfying.
Less satisfying, however, is Cloud’s ‘unique ability’. Tapping the triangle button shifts his fighting stance from standard ‘operator’ form to ‘punisher’ style, slowing his movement speed, but boosting his attack rate and power. While playing in both punisher and operator modes feels fabulous, switching between them does not.
Hitting triangle while carrying out regular attacks doesn’t always result in the desired stance change and, even when it does, the effect is often delayed far beyond the initial button press. Occasionally, too, I find myself wondering whether the shift has occurred. Yes, a sound effect plays, and Cloud’s physical stance changes. But the chime is often lost in the racket of battle, and the stance change animation dissolves into your flurry of physical attacks. Worse, the lack of clarity necessitates a glance away from the struggle to the stance status atop the command menu and, taking your eyes off the action, even momentarily, frequently results in receiving a substantial hit.
Thankfully, Cloud’s party members’ unique abilities do not suffer like this, and, the supporting cast is, arguably, more fun to command than him. While childhood pal Tifa plays similarly to Cloud, excelling in close-quarters combat and boosting stagger meters, both Barret “Bowling Ball” Wallace and Aerith “The Ancient” Gainsborough specialise in long-range assaults.
Barratt uses his gargantuan gatling gun to chip away at enemies from a distance. His unique ability, “Overcharge”, unleashes three mighty bullets, accompanied by chunky explosions and gratifying kickback, and rapidly fills his ATB metre. Aerith, on the other hand, is far more graceful and focusses on ranged magic attacks. Her best ability is “Arcane Ward”, allowing her to lay down a luminous field in which any magic spells will be cast twice which is excellent for exploiting elemental weaknesses.
Unlike Cloud’s biceps, Remake is dense, with even more systems (Equipment, Materia, Summons, etc.) balancing out the above. But, perhaps assisted the original’s ubiquity, they never become overwhelming. Though I have my irritations with the game (it’s linear, there’s a dirge of areas to grind in and the texture pop-in, even on PS4 Pro, is damn distracting), it has the most engaging battle system I’ve played in years and I cannot wait to see where Square Enix takes the series next.
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