I suppose "unimpactful" was the wrong word, but I wanted to convey that if the absence of items makes the game stronger, then their current implementation should be reevaluated. Instead of crates giving you Potions that only heal a small amount of HP and require a bit of menuing to use, why not just have the crates restore your HP immediately? Instead of having Phoenix Downs, why not implement a mechanic where you can revive allies by going to the spot where they're downed and pressing a prompt? Instead of collecting Antidotes, why not make blocking a status aliment attack reduce its effectiveness? By doing these, newcomers would still have the tools they need to survive and the combat would be more fluid overall.
Removal of items doesn't make the game "stronger," they make the game's subsequent hard mode playthrough and game design shine brighter. That doesn't mean Normal is irrelevant.
Starting from Hard Mode instantly wouldn't work because the Hard Mode is scaled/balanced around the characters being level 50, with multiple materia mastered, and having their weapon skills
mastered. If the game started you out with all abilities, materia and stats at max, that'd be an
incredibly short and pointless campaign, especially since you'd lack the experience to properly engage with it in the first place. It's why starting KH in Critical Mode or RE8 in Village of Shadows difficulty is extremely painful and tedious if you have absolutely no idea how to handle it
and have none of the abilities/currency/items to offset it. It's post-game content for a reason.
Not only that, but what's the point of gil, shops, and any of the RPG functions of a Final Fantasy then? You're making the game play like an entirely different series like Kingdom Hearts. Status effects are cured by items because there are a
myriad of statuses that have specific restorative items meant to alleviate them. And if you could just
block status effects, then they'd be pointless and the game becomes a full tilt action game where your entire strategy relies on perfect reflexes and timing ala Dark Souls and Kingdom Hearts. Malboros would be worthless lol. That's
not what FFVII-R or any FF is. You
will get hit (
often), and you take the hits
and keep going. The only status effect in FFVII-R that's "blockable" is
sometimes paralysis. And even then, mostly your only out to paralysis is avoiding it.
Crates aren't everywhere in the level design, and therefore their use as HP restoratives cannot be relied on everywhere, anytime in any situation. A potion is the better portable option because it restores a set value of HP that a person can use, and when someone's HP stat increases, that pittance of recovery will not scale to their HP value. That's why several types of potions exist. I mean, this is why these type of RPG items exist. And infinite amounts of Phoenix Downs used on the spot as a sort of CoD/FPS type revival mechanic would absolutely
murder any sort of difficulty in the game. One only needs to look at FFXV to see what type of imbalance that would create.
If the only problem that items in FFVII-R create is
using a menu, then that's perfectly fine. This is an action-
RPG. You're gonna have menus. This isn't a full-bore action game where everything should be shortcutted and instantly accessible.
