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Remake Options - Roaming Summons VS Command Summons?

Claymore

3x3 Eyes
A thought spurned on by both the Smash Bros and Advent Children on Netflix news, but how would people feel about roaming summons? Instead of lengthy FMVs, would you be open to having summons fight alongside you via command input ala FFX? Or would you prefer more of a free roaming (do what they want) AI aspect ala Advent Children - with them doing their own thing in the battlefield once summoned?

Since it's more than likely that some open-worldness will be involved in the 'evolved' battle system, I think it could be quite cool to have summons do their own thing once called and fight alongside the party. Depending on your level of mastery of a summon materia, stronger summons could attack an enemy before flying off and scouring the countryside - looking for more targets - meaning that you'd have a cooldown before they return and you can summon them in battle again. Or even bathe everyone in an attack until you level up the materia and gain more mastery and control of that summon.

Could be a pretty neat feature.

Regardless, I really like the 'remnants' of a summon's presence that they we get a glimpse of in XV - with the area thunder-scorched until it slowly fades back to normal. That's something I'd like to see more of, in terms of both magic and summons.
 

hian

Purist
While I definitely think the FFX summon system is better than the FF7 one, and IMO the best summon system in the series - I'm not sure I'd like were the game would have to go content-wise if they made the summon system more extensive.

FF7 had a really large amount of summons, and they could have that because they were essentially just spells. FFX type summons require a lot of work, so if they did it that way, we'd probably be looking at a lot of summons being cut out.
How about Knights of Round? How would that summon work with a complex summon system?

It's a difficult question to answer for me, because it probably means I have to make a choice between A.) having a new and interesting game-play system which results in cut content or B.) having a less complex and less interesting system, but keeping the content and feel of the original.
I honestly can't say which one I'd rather want for the remake, though I have to see I lean slightly more towards the latter than the former.
 

Flare

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Flare
Besides FFVII's og of handling summons, and FFX's awesome control-the-summons-like-a-party-member system, there's also FFXII's own 'roaming summons' that appear on the field. They're automatically controlled, wander around with you and do their own thing when it comes to attack.

FFVII has 16 summons, while XII has 13. They could do a similar summon system to XII's fairly easily, I think, if the summons are AI controlled and do their own thing, rather than X's extensive Aeon control and leveling.
However, if they do a similar style to XII's, of course I hope it's highly upgraded (or just based off the 'roaming on the field' style) as XII's summon system was just okay. In fact it's fairly useless, but that's more or less the summons themselves. :P

I like how XV's summons system looks, so I would be fine with them making VII's Remake summons in a similar fashion, appearing on the field alongside your party. I like Claymore's idea of them just doing an attack initially but perhaps lasting longer the more their materia is leveled up. An exception to 'roaming' could be Knights of the Round, whereas they just appear on the field and do massive damage to all nearby enemies.
 

Mayo Master

Pro Adventurer
I think I'd prefer the concept of "Roaming Summon", either like FF X and FF XII. In particular, FF X system was really good because Summons were very neatly balanced: they were a trump card without being game-breaking. IMO, summons in FF XII were vastly underpowered; at high level there was pretty much no incentive for using them.
That being said, if FF VII remake plays it like a "spell", but with the same visual impact as FF XV Ramuh, I won't complain :P
 

Starling

Pro Adventurer
The issue I see with roaming summons is that knights of the round would take up a lot of space if all of them stuck around for a while instead of showing up for one attack. Odin is also probably better suited for being summoned for a single attack as his main thing is to 1 hit KO anything that isn't immune to instant death, using an alternate attack whenever that's the case.
 

Pixel

The Pixie King
I want them to be a spectacle. They have more of an impact when there's a big summon animation, ending with a single big attack. Roaming just seems mundane.
 

vaderSW1

Dark Knight of the Red Wings
Yeah, for me I want the summons to remain as they were in the original. Albeit, graphically updated and with the ability to skip the animation if we want. It's awesome watching the summon animations the first few times you use them. After that it gets pretty old. I just want to summon, skip the animation, see the damage and move on.

That's not to say that the FFX summoning system wasn't neat or anything. For me, it was just more of a novelty thing. I prefer the way the summons had been used in the previous games in the series.
 

Flintlock

Pro Adventurer
^ I agree with all of that.

I wrote this about the Ramuh summon in the FFXV demo:
Sure, the animation was epic, but if it's too weak then I'll never use it and if it's too strong then I'll get bored of seeing it. Very few Final Fantasy games have struck the right balance with summons. Come to think of it, X is the only game in which I still use them on pretty much every playthrough.
So I don't have any real hopes or expectations for how they'll be handled in the VII remake. I'd probably be happy if they stayed exactly as they were in the original: useful for the occasional quick kill and an easy way of doing a lot of damage for new players, but ultimately outclassed by the right equipment/materia set-ups if you know what you're doing.
 

Claymore

3x3 Eyes
While I definitely think the FFX summon system is better than the FF7 one, and IMO the best summon system in the series - I'm not sure I'd like were the game would have to go content-wise if they made the summon system more extensive.

I've never been a fan of how summons have been handled in the series in general - and that boredom of having to sit through the lengthy FMVs plays a major part in it. Even the glorious Ramuh in XV is going to get tiresome very quickly. VII has an even bigger issue in that, with the exception of Knights of the Round (for the obvious reason of it's sheer power) they all quickly become redundant. There are far better, and more visually interesting, spells, and it takes far less time to utilise them. The best function of summons was slotting them with the right materia to get some neat uses. And that's a shame.

This is why I really enjoyed X's utilisation of them, and would agree it being the best summoning system devised so far. Even though I didn't bother with the leveling up and outfitting them with the best commands, having them fight in battle was a great change and I felt a greater affinity and companionship with them. This is why the final game segment meant so much.

You make a great point though about what would have to be given up in order to keep the extensive summon list. It leads into the bigger question of what could, or what would you not mind, being cut from the game? Or back again to what if they cut some of these gameplay aspects out, but added in more story segments from the larger universe?

Anyway, this is all completely dependant on the battle system they go with of course.

I like Claymore's idea of them just doing an attack initially but perhaps lasting longer the more their materia is leveled up. An exception to 'roaming' could be Knights of the Round, whereas they just appear on the field and do massive damage to all nearby enemies.

The issue I see with roaming summons is that knights of the round would take up a lot of space if all of them stuck around for a while instead of showing up for one attack. Odin is also probably better suited for being summoned for a single attack as his main thing is to 1 hit KO anything that isn't immune to instant death, using an alternate attack whenever that's the case.

There definitely needs to be exceptions if it was a 'roaming' feature, though saying that, the XV demo handled a host of army soldiers and you fighting the plains creatures all at the same time, so I don't think space on the field is strictly a problem.
 

Claymore

3x3 Eyes
I think we can draw a few conclusions / assumptions based on what we managed to see of the battle system. The more action-orientated gameplay combined with the character switching aspects and the summon menu suggests to me that we're not going to get strict FMV summons. I reckon my initial thoughts of something like roaming summons is going to take place here. You summon them, then they're off attacking in the background for a bit before doing a final signature move and disappearing.

Alternatively, they might even integrate it with the character switching system, so you can switch to - and fight as - a summon for a limited period of time before they disappear. In this scenario, mastering materia would lengthen the time limit and power of the summon.
 
Why not have both? Summoning should be a skill that takes time to master. Less skilful summoners will end up with a summons that does its own thing; more skilful summoners control it completely. I'd like to be able to skip the opening animations, though. TBH I hardly ever use them; like Claymore says, they are redundant.
 

JechtShotMK9

The Sublimely Magnificent One
AKA
Kamiccolo9
I've just assumed that summons will be like they were in Crisis Core. Just a (hopefully skippable) FMV that damages everything on the screen, or within a certain radius around you. Probably combined with VII's "one use per materia level" clause that summons had.
Or possibly a "recharge" period after using summons, with more time necessary for stronger ones.
 

Channy

Bad Habit
AKA
Ruby Rose, Lucy
With how the new battle system is gonna go, I kind of imagine semi-roaming summons... You summon someone but they're independent on the battle field, kind of like when you summon other players in Demon's Souls. They have their own attacks, stray along the battlefield and may not always be 100% reliable but that way you can still fight/use your own character too. And then when they use their ultimate attack or HP down, then they dispell.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Personally, I've always liked summons for their spectacle, and the fact that the cutscenes give a nice way to just take a quick breather from focusing on combat, while some badass, extra-dimensional, pseudo-deity shows up to rain down absolute hell. I also think that it works well that way, since the original summons paired with temporary party disappearance to avoid the fallback of their often cataclysmic destruction -- unlike in FFX, where the Aeon's were meant to be a being brought forward and controlled by the summoner that fights WITH them.

I think what the summons' do comes down to is what they're meant to accomplish tactically. Being that the combat speed of the Remake is set to be slower than Dissidia or Kingdom Hearts, I don't think that having Summons as an active entity is necessary, since I don't think that absorbing damage is going to be a role that they need to fill (no swapping them in to take a hit from Aire Tam Storm for you). Additionally, while we have seen summons fought by the protagonists before (Bahamut Fury & Bahamut Sin), I don't think that this works as well with the FFVII summons when used by the party.

The FFVII summons being untouchable when you use them is much of what makes them feel powerful. In the Super Smash Brothers map they showed, the summons aren't like the Pokéballs where they call a creature that stands on the board to deal damage -- they bring forth an unstoppable entity that delivers a map-altering attack. I know that when fighting the Weapons, I want the summons to feel invulnerable when they attack. In that respect, I really like what I've seen from how XV seems to be using them.

One of the other things that I liked about FFVII's original summons was how, while the summons had basic tactical uses aside from dealing shittons of magic damage immune to Reflect (Bahamut's non-elemental damage, Ifrit's Force-based damage, etc.), they also had slightly more nuanced tactical uses (Knights of the Round hitting multiple times, Odin having a weak enemy insta-kill or a generic damage attack). I think that in the Remake, you could play with that a little more. Some summons' attacks could hit for one huge damage amount like Bahamut, whereas others could deal slightly less damage several times over (which plays differently with resistances) like Kujata could actually hit four times: Lightning, Ice, Fire, & Earth.





X :neo:
 
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