I don't think people understand Final Fantasy 7 Remake's battle system; Let's talk about it.

[Shiken]

Hiku said:

Shiken said:

I felt the battle system was very well done and a faithful transition from turn based combat to action based combat. I was very happy to see strategic elements stull in place and just as relevant as ever. My only complaint is that ally AI could be better when selecting targets and maintaining attack paterns to fill their ATB, but this could easily be fixed by release. I think leaving ATB actions up to the player was a brilliant move by SE, and I look forward to delving deeper into the mechanics upon release of the full game (part one anyway).

That was one of my main gripes as well, when Barret didn't target the flying enemies. But I'm starting to think that's not how the game is designed.

What if the A.I. is not meant to make any such decisions, and it is not their responsibility to target any specific enemy type?
What if, like in classic FF games, it's up to us to target the appropriate enemy with the appropriate character? And their only responsibility is managing the ATB gauge, while everything else that may come as a result of it is just supposed to be seen as a bonus?

I'm going to go into my second playthrough of the Demo with this mindset.

I can see that, as using the correct character for the correct situations would be part of the strategy.  That is how I was looking at it.  However I don't feel that they attack effectively enough to fill the ATB bar on their own either.  I found whoever I was controlling to have a full bar much faster than the AI controlled character.

But another thing I thought of is it kind of encourages you to use other characters in long fights to help build those meters yourself.  Like you fill one guage, then change to Barret.  Cloud keeps auto attacking while you build Barret (or whoever), now you have several full bars to use across multiple characters rather than just two on a single character.

As far as targeting AI, it was not Barret attacking out of reach enemies that was my problem.  Instead it was Cloud failing to cover me from the other enemies while I was using Barret.  In any case it is clear that this battle system is much more involved than FFXV or KH, which is exactly what I was hoping for.  I feel there is/will be a lot more to it than what we are seeing in the demo alone, which could make all the difference in the world.

I think the best change in the AI would be to allow selectable strategy for each character as an AI controlled character.

Attack same target

Focus on evasion and blocking

Attack closest enemy

Something simple like that would suffice IMO.  Right now they just kind of act with no direction and are inconsistent with their attack paterns, which makes it difficult to plan around.  I like what I am seeing so far, but if I had to change one thing so far that would be it.

Last edited by Shiken - on 03 March 2020