Remake's battle system is broken

[Serge]

Having played the game up to Aeris' rescue mission, I had hopes for far smoother battles. Hacking and slashing is alot of fun, but once you have to open up menus for EVERY special action, and EVERY character separately, the battles quickly start to get tedious. Using quick commands just creates more problems than it solves. You only have four or five quick commands for each character, leaving most of the actions unaccessible for quick play. (Wanting to cast a curaga instead of cure forced me to dig deeper.) And as you're bound to sometimes change quick commands, memorizing them is near impossible. I have enough trouble controlling my characters as it is, getting them to attack the same enemy to reduce their numbers, and it's very tiring to constantly maintain L2 (block) while being in quick commands. (Why is there is no toggle option for blocking??)

So I really enjoyed some of the fight mechanics, but the limited things you can perform instantly makes the game feel... like something not worth my time.

 

[Dionysos]

I'm sorry your thread didn't display at first. I think the forum's system saw the word 'Hacking' and panicked.
There wouldn't usually be a problem.

Having played the game up to Aeris' rescue mission, I had hopes for far smoother battles. Hacking and slashing is alot of fun, but once you have to open up menus for EVERY special action, and EVERY character separately, the battles quickly start to get tedious. Using quick commands just creates more problems than it solves. You only have four or five quick commands for each character, leaving most of the actions unaccessible for quick play. (Wanting to cast a curaga instead of cure forced me to dig deeper.) And as you're bound to sometimes change quick commands, memorizing them is near impossible. I have enough trouble controlling my characters as it is, getting them to attack the same enemy to reduce their numbers, and it's very tiring to constantly maintain L2 (block) while being in quick commands. (Why is there is no toggle option for blocking??)

So I really enjoyed some of the fight mechanics, but the limited things you can perform instantly makes the game feel... like something not worth my time.

I don't think I ever made use of the 'quick commands' because I tended to vary how I played depending on the situation. I just had to get as fast as I could with clicking through the menu. I don't recall having too many problems because I'd spread materia across the party and I'd try to remember where the important moves were.

I'd agree that it is fiddly, but I didn't think it was game breaking or anything. Despite some stressful moments (mostly due to enemies attacking me whilst I attempted a move, cancelling it) I actually really loved the battle system. It seemed to be very dynamic.

 

[Serge]

I loved the battle system too, but I though the point with quick commands was to make the battles much faster/smoother. Unfortunately only four commands are available. The only way I've been able to work with them is to assign only one type of actions to one character, for example, only offensive spells to Cloud [Aero, Thunder, Aeroga, Firaga], benign spells to Tifa [Cure, Cura, Regen, Haste], and physical attacks to Barret [Focused Shot, Smackdown, Uppercut, Maximum Fury].

I wish Square would at least have made two different sets of quick commands for each character. And made toggle for blocking.

 

[Dionysos]

It seems like you might be using the system in the best way possible with regards to the quick commands.

The way I played was different. I'd just keep switching between all of my characters, memorising where certain abilities were in the lists of their menus and just scrolling down and selecting them quickly. At least it felt quick to me. I looked at a recording of me playing and maybe it wasn't as quick as a I remembered.

Hopefully by Part 2 of the Remake they'll have ironed out any issues with the battle system so that we are left with an improved version. The battle system was already wonderful in many areas but the idea of it getting enhanced and perhaps less fiddly for Part 2 is a comforting thought. They're not likely to get rid of the good parts already in place, but they might listen to feedback on these aspects that affected it.