I understand the feelings of confusion with the gameplay FF7R. It worked great for me, but it's not for everyone I think. I'm good at real time strategy and real time action management
They tried plain action with FF16 and this was the one I didn't like as much. It's basically press the same buttons when your skill bar is filled again. No strategy, no tactical enough, no real challenge... no need to memorize enemy patterns, dodging or anything
Played for the story only
If I could choose one gameplay path for future games I hope they stick with FF7R instead of FF16. The former is pretty unique and special, the later is just generic