Never said they didnt look good, just not as good as 7R

I disagree with that one.

As someone who would prefer a more ATB based experience, there are a few reasons. People first of all calling ATB outdated piss me off, so I argue against them, gameplay can't be outdated, it's gameplay. Just because they don't like it doesn't mean it's not good but in a sense it feels like SquEnix feel like this also and are purposely changing FF as a game to fit and appeal to a certain audience and I'm not that audience, you know a fan of the series.

Also, for me, a lot of gameplay strategy is removed when it's action based. Turns into just wailing on the enemy a lot, now if this was part of a series known for that, DMC, KH etc, sure, great but this is FF. I kinda expect some kind of strategy. I beat the final boss of FF7R first time by spamming a Tifa ability which cost no resources and gave her invul-frames and having Barret at the back spamming Prayer (a heal spell better than cure and all combined and cost zero MP) on cooldown. Spamming square, doing tiny damage on enemies just to get your bar full to do a move, like why not just have a timer to get to that and have attack as one of the moves and have it do the same amount of damage all those tiny hits were doing? It's like they think people will get bored if they don't break their square button.

Let's put it a different want, using another genre. If the next Tekken released and it was a 2D plane fighting game, ala Street Fighter. It's still a fighting game, still Tekken but my interest in the series will drop because well, I like Tekken's gameplay, not SFs.

I have nothing against action based combat, I love me some KHs and while maybe not to my tastes, FF15 and 7R were good in terms of combat overall (can't even remember the story in FF15, lots of wandering around an open world) and FF7R was mostly just filler. But older FF games, with their stories and combat are far better than anything that has been offered to use over the last decade and a half.

Hear, hear.

Since it's a time travel story of sorts I still hope that the end pulls off a "thought you could get everyone alive? Now a lot of other people die instead" but I doubt Nomura has the balls. If it was Kitase instead writing it, then yeah.

Don't worry, they won't do what you fear to FFVII. They know how legendary the game is so they won't destroy the remake with removing important deaths.

I'm really confident with Rebirth. I liked Remake but I know Rebirth will be FANTASTIC !

I thought the original writer (Kazushige Nojima) was bought back for FF7R, which is why at first it seems rather tame in comparison to Nomura's usual writing of "throw everything at it and nothing will stick." but in the end as director Nomura (no doubt from the idea they want to make a new game just with popular characters and not an actual remake of Final Fantasy 7 which may be one of the greatest games of all time and therefore deserving of an actual remake, not some weird fan fiction story where Aeris survives) stepped in to 'add' an ending to part one that felt epic?

I'm unsure but between Nojima and Kitase one of them wanted to kill off the entire party except for the three that went on to raid Midgar, so if there's someone to stop Nomura from simply resurrecting everyone it'd be him.

So they changed the story enough to kill off everyone even though only 1 characters dies in the original, long after they leave Midgar but leaving only a party of 3 (presumably because programming a large dymanic character set is too much work?) Cloud Barret and Tifa?

This is sounding confusing. 

Yeah, it was Kitase. Nomura actually convinced him not to do it.

https://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7#the-game

It wouldn't be Barret and Tifa that would necessarily survive, mind, just the other two you chose to take with Cloud.

Ah, getting confused as to what game we were referring. But eitherway, in the context of the original. I can see where they were going but does seem a little much, like if you had put lots of work into Aeris early on and she died in the story then switched to Cid and Red but for that mission decided to take Barret and Tifa you'd be stuck with potentially underleveled characters for final fight and end game would become a bit less interesting as less to do.