Final Fantasy has a combat problem.

[LegitHyperbole]

The Fury said:

As a fan of ATB, I'd be happy if they bought that back. In reality, when people talk about FfFmoving away from turn based, 15 was the first and until recently it was just that, until 16. FF7R was more of a odd hybrid but in reality the T in ATB had been replaced with 'button mash'. "Classic" gameplay in FF7R basically just a auto battler until you had enough points to use a move... which if you were sensible was the move that didn't need MP and gave invul frames. :P

This isn't saying the combat in 15, 16 and 7R are bad, they clearly aren't but when I'm not looking for an action game to play and want a Final Fantasy game, I'm looking for ATB gameplay where for the most part I feel like I'm progressing in power and skill as lower enemies get basically oneshot and are learning experiences for the test later (aka bosses). From what I played of 16, what I can remember of 15 and 7R, I didn't feel like the combat from one enemy to a boss was really that different outside of set pieces in the boss' arsenal.

FF 7R combat would be really good if they took potions off of AP usage and released the hard mode as an option for first time players. As someone mentioned, you'd be using turn based stuff a lot more and choosing spells to attack weaknesses and actually using skills on enemies. I know this because I'm doing battle Intel for Chadley and I can see how it would work but normal makes it so you're using AP to chug potions mostly and easy gets rid of that but the enemies don't last long enough for you to build up AP. They really didn't balance it to have the combat system shine on either difficulty and it's a shame, there is greatness underneath that but I have no intent on playing a second run on hard to find it and probably be chugging mostly potions at any rate. Just a few small tweaks and they'd have the perfect system for mainline games, I'm shocked FF16 didn't run with this.