Can't say that I'm a huge fan of the sound of this...but it would be unfair to judge without actually having seen the changes.

At worst, FFVII needs some minor tweaks to the battle system; a better menu etc. but definitely no fundamental changes. I dunno why you would do that when there's probably very few people out there who actually want it.

You can control more than one character, you can customise your materia to modify your attack, you can use magics and skills without having the characters automatically spam them, you have to manage your mp and select the best spells for any given situation, you have a multitude of on use summons that dont despawn your party and instead just do their attacks. I do not recall limit breaks on FF13... FF7 had multiple per character, magics would power up, clever combinations could power them up even further... Knights of the effin round! Its a complete different scale and depth where you have control over everything and you manage your resources. That is the complete opposite of FFXIII.

This fixation with menu's like its a terrible thing. If you map attack, magic, guard and item to the face buttons what do you get? The controls of an action game! Fantastic! A menu is oh so scary! Just stylise it like Persona does. Problem solved. 

Since when was a menu interface in battle a problem in an FF game? I mean other than FF13 which made things happen so quickly if you wanted to actually go through the menus pick a specific power or move, by that time you'd be hit serveral times and probably be near dead so you'd have to change stances to get healing losing where you were.

That's why they added the 'auto' attack... because they messed up.

1. I already know you can control more than one character in FFVII hence "AI controlled party members" ...

2. You can customize attacks with your weapons special abilities in FFXIII instead and other mainline FF games feature it too ...

3. Don't get your point about "been able to use magic and skills without having characters spamming them". It's either you have magic/skill or you don't so I don't see how this point is any different from "AI controlled party members" ... 

4. Summons despawning party members started with FFX and that game does summons the BEST since it adds a whole lot of depth to gameplay ...

5. Limit Breaks are just DIFFERENT in FFXIII. Instead of getting unique moves you just have summons special to each character and abilities known as "Techniques" ...

6. You certainly have to manage your MP in FFVII but that simply isn't possible with FFXIII's enemy design since their a lot harder and you REALLY need MP for especially drawn out long boss fights or regular battles in the last quarter of the game. So while there is less complexity when it comes to magic, there's more complexity to be had in battles ... 

It gets even more complex when introducing a staggering and command stacking too so it's not like FFXIII combat system is devoid of ANY complexity ...

It's not only the menu that's annoying. The idea of taking "turns" is just stupid in general when combat is more natural in realtime and fighting is ALL about opportunistic chances to gain an upper hand against an enemy. You could dodge/guard attacks instead of taking them head on if you had an option to. Go find some cover to use items to restore yourself. Almost always have a chance to do sneak attacks provided your character specialized in rogue like abilities. More flexibility to use gameplay on environments. There's just too many limitations for turn-based combat to be introduced to all sorts of new and dynamic gameplay elements when an action based combat could remove them. So what if you have to do these things in realtime plus it's not like an action based combat is imposing limits to do the things that you would in a turn based system ...

It just makes sooo much more sense for Final Fantasy to be an ARPG when the battles are pretty upfront ...

I'm once again deeply impressed with the gaming community, the simple mentioning of gameplay changes to the remake of this 18 year old game makes people go and preemptively shit their pants so to speak. No wait and see approach here, no no, if it's not 100% like the game I played years ago on PS1 then it must be terrible.

I loved it as a kid so it surely can't be improved with modern technology at all, no nostalgia goggles involved on my part here.

The director for FFVII was Yoshinori Kitase and the designer was Tetsuya Nomura both who are still with SE and Sakaguchi is stuck making mobile games so I guess you could say that he's like Kojima in that both had good reasons to be outed ...

Why? I'm talking in the context of FF here, not ARPGs vs TRPGs here. I mean FF games, where turn based (even if some weren't great version of it) worked for this game since the 1980s. Why does it suddenly not work?

Taking your point, it also makes sense to me that Gears of War could be a Strategy RPG like X-com but they didn't make it like that and shock, it was still good. Yet, look at how well X-com Enemy Unknown did compare to X-com Declassified. That 'action' really did translate well, right?

Many of us want graphical improvements, being able to wander around an interactive Midgar or full 3d environments but in order for it to feel and be like FF7 it would have to have the same gameplay, else what is it? FF games are like FF games because of the gameplay, not the story. You could put that exact same story, characters and setting in any gameplay style but we didn't like it for that we liked it because it was FF. Would you play FF7 remake if it looked and played like Skyrim?

SE doing things no one asked for just like always! Nothing new to see here.

From what I have heard, Sakaguchi wanted to leave...

Hehe, not exactly a source, but Mega64

He was forced out after the FF movie floped, but who's to say he didn't want to leave before that?