I don't think you get what I have a hard time doing.Stopping and planning things in the middle of combat doesn't mean anything when I still have to go back to regular combat speed to execute that plan. It is executing the plan in real time that I have problems with.
There's no point in pausing the game to plan when the system of "pause-plan-unpause-execute plan" takes way longer then just mashing buttons haphazardly and praying you fill the ATB bar. At that point... you might as well just program the "pause-plan-unpause-execute plan" loop into the game which is what the traditional ATB gauge already was in a lot of ways. It's become very obvious that SE doesn't want that kind of thing to be part of the normal ways the game should be experienced, so they've now made it optional and inefficient to do as far as time is concerned.
A good example of a game that does that kind of split well is Transistor. While the game can totally be played in real-time action, there is a planing phase that pauses combat. Only... it does a whole lot more then that. You can execute a large range of attacks in planning phase that your character will then execute automatically once you exit planning phase. To counterbalance that, planning phase is on a cool-down and while it is on cool-down, you can't do your normal actions unless you've augmented them for that specifically.
Everything you are telling me makes it seem like there is a planning phase with no way for the character/game to automatically execute the plan afterwards. At least so long as the character is doing normal attacks and not ATB attacks. And it's the non-ATB part of combat that matches all my frustrations with Action Games to a T.
...But that's literally not how the combat works
at all.
When you're going into Tactical Mode, you select the ATB actions and target(s) that you want to execute them on, and then it triggers those to happen. The entire mechanic is giving you the ability to "Pause - Plan - Execute Plan"
at literally any time that you want.
Like... what I would want is an option for normal attacks and combos to not influence how fast the ATB fills. That way I wouldn't have the nagging fact that I'm playing unoptimally playing in the back of my mind all the time. Normal attacks do damage? Sure. Blocking help with Limit Break generation? Fine. At least if it was set-up like this I would only have to worry about blocking and not both blocking and attacking. Linking the ATB fill rate to how fast and good I am at pressing the right buttons? That is what I have the most issues with and is the thing I'm honestly dreading to have to deal with. Faster ATB fill rate means more actions. But to get faster ATB rate, I have to push more buttons in a short span of time in the right order. Which has been my least favorite game mechanic since I found out video games existed.
Faster ATB Gauge for attacking is literally just,
"Hold down the Square button to make the ATB Bar charge faster" because it's incentivizing you to engage with the realistic combat, rather than just standing around blocking & waiting for ATB actions to come up. If they don't incentivize combat, then taking the realtime combat actions has no benefit to just dodging and blocking. Given that Square is
the ONLY attack button, it's got literally nothing to do with how good you are at "pressing the right buttons" whatsoever.
Keep in mind, the other 1-2 characters in the party who are AI controlled are executing the basic attack, block, dodge mechanics all the time.
That's why they're explicitly not meant to be overly complicated – they're meant to feel that it's satisfying to control and fight with each of the different characters. That's also why the mechanic that wasn't in the demo yet is that each character has a stance change with Triangle that changes what their attack patterns are like in some way to add in some more engaging interactions into the basics of the real-time dodging, blocking, attacking mechanics, but it doesn't fundamental change the core of the ATB-based gameplay.
This is also why all of the ATB actions are
PLAYER-CONTROLLED. The AI does basic combat actions, but anything specific is up to you. Managing all of that in real-time is challenging to keep up with as you swap between various characters and fight, so triggering the Tactical Mode really quickly at any point by pressing X is to allow you to plan out specific sets of ATB actions, set them up easily and super quickly one after the other in very short windows of game-time, and then return to the realtime standard combat interactions.
You can see all of this happening in 2:10 - 2:27 of the gameplay demo:
- 2:10 - 2:12 – Tactical Mode: Selects Barret's Spells to cast Cure on Cloud
- 2:13 - 2:15 – Swap to Cloud, Cure Spell reaches Cloud (in real time)
- 2:16 - 2:17 – Tactical Mode: Cloud uses Braver Ability on the Sweeper
- 2:18 - 2:19 – Braver Ability animation starts
- 2:20 - 2:25 – Tactical Mode: Selects Barret's Focused Shot, Swaps to Barret, Selects the Sweeper as the target
- 2:26 - 2:27 – Focus Shot Ability animation charges (as it cuts to a different shot to explain stagger mechanics)
That's 11 seconds in Tactical Mode, and 5 seconds of watching animations in realtime, so that it's long enough for the audience to understand what's happening. Essentially this clip is showing that you could execute the Cure Spell from Barret, Braver from Cloud, and Focused Shot from Barret in what's under 2 seconds of game time if you're using Tactical Mode.
If you're one of the people who's really good at pushing a lot of buttons together in a short time in the right order, you can set up shortcuts to the ATB actions to do that without using Tactical Mode to have something closer to the same level of efficiency, but that's a completely optional configuration for how to play the game, and is about the only time when that type of thing is even remotely hinted at as a way of playing, because it's solely introduced to engage the players that LIKE that kind of mechanical combat rhythm, while removing it from everyone who doesn't.
Additionally, the enemy Staggering mechanic is there, so that it gives you a reason to focus on different opportunities for the timing of your ATB actions. If an enemy is staggered, you can get extra damage on it with anything that you do, so going into Tactical Mode, setting all of the ATB attacks and chaining those attacks together at once against a staggered target gives a reason to incentivize focus on combat and enemy states over optimizing the exact triggering of the ATB bars the split second they become available.
There's a reason I don't play Triple A game titles. And "push lots of buttons in a short span of time in the right order" is the main reason. It just looks like I'm adding the modern Final Fantasy games to that list as well now. Sad, but oh well. Most people like action games and I don't blame SE for following modern gaming trends. I'm just not giving them money for a game where it looks like the bulk of the content will frustrate me more then anything else.
I hope you guys like the new combat system.
Literally
ZERO part of what's been revealed about the Remake's combat system is designed to
make you "push lots of buttons in a short span of time in the right order" in any way whatsoever, and in fact
literally everything about Tactical Mode is designed to do precisely the exact opposite of that very thing.
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