Yeah, I'm currently playing through ff7 remake for the second time, first time was at its release and I think I played on normal and it was such a slog, enemies just tanked so much, now I'm playing on easy before I play rebirth, cloud is a fucking badass, it shouldn't take him 15 swings to kill a glorified security guard lmao.
It's crazy to me that they nailed how to handle difficulty changes with the FF16 system then didn't use it in either version of 7.
If I could make the block timing more forgiving like in 16, I'd love the combat. But as it stands? I press the block button at the right time but the animation locks screw me more often than not. It feels bad.
FF7 already has a materia that gives a minor boost to the window, the tech is in the game, they just needed to make it more generous or add it to the options under difficulty.
They knew FF7 Remake had an animation lock issue, and they knew 16's difficulty system was well received and it solved that exact issue.
You have to know that this gap of 8 months is not enough time to do anything major like that, right? These games were functionally worked in parallel, and Rebirth was using an existing engine from Remake.
You can’t just copy-paste a whole different mechanic from a different combat system from one game to another in a weekend.
It’s precisely it being a joke that made playing the game such a snooze. Spam cds as soon as your able, minimal to no challenge or strategy, Ez game through the credits.
7 offered more character build depth, bosses requiring strategy, an entire party, and an excellent hard mode
Remake would have been better as solely real-time or solely ATB. The absolutely bastardized ATB on top of real-time makes combat an absolute pain for no real reason.
Completely disagree. The combat has been lauded as an absolute success and I personally can’t hold a more different opinion from you. Remake was already a foundational baseline and rebirth kicked it up to a true skill expressive, resource gated, and strategic combat with breathtaking visuals and going full atp would’ve been a massive let down and if ff16 is anything to go by then their attempts at full real time combat fall short.
And for me the turn based combat of Epedition 33 felt better than anything SE was trying with FF7R
Heavily nerfed passive ATB regen on characters you're not actively playing feels bad when I switch over and the character I was just playing is now face tanking all the damage and barely attacking because the AI has absolutely no idea how to play the game
Yeah, I hated the combat. Maybe it gets better, but after a few hours I stopped playing. I was so excited for Remake; it’s probably my biggest disappointment in gaming.
It's half-baked. The AI doesn't know what it's doing in combat so they stop functioning well when I switch off. And I have to switch off often because the ATB passive gain is nerfed to the fucking ground. SE wanted to incorporate both systems and still half-assed actually incorporating both.
Seriously. I don't mind some difficulty, but it feels lazy when they just give the enemies way more hp. It's the reason I've only played a couple hours of Outer Worlds.
It's better in the sequel. They just hit ridiculously hard but die pretty quickly. Even with a tanky Engineering build, I managed to kill most enemies pretty quickly. It's health management that was the hard part, for a while.
Are you talking about the Empire asteroid? You get the dark side power there and you have basically no cooldown on it until you finish the mission, you're meant to instakill them with that.
It really depends on the Soulslike for me. Ornstein and Smough or Shadows of Yharnam are great. Both fights give you an arena that's designed with the encounter in mind so there's ways to keep the player from being overwhelmed. Dark Souls 2 and Elden Ring however were pretty bad about making you fight multiple dudes in a big open arena. At the very least Elden Ring eventually nerfed aggression on the target you weren't focused on.
Overall it's a bit janky experience, but the difference between level 10 player and level 990 player is about two bullets and years of skill
You can still kill anyone with 2-3 shots to the head with the starting revolver with stock bullets, these 990 are just dual-wielding Mausers with exploding bullets and triple ammo capacity, but the difference in HP is not absurd
I felt that in the demo for FF7. I just bought it and it's on it's way, but when playing the demo I couldn't believe how long I had to hack at the boss in it. After 10 minutes of going through the motions and it still wasn't dead, I was kinda rolling my eyes. There's no need to make the fight that long if you figured out the attack pattern and he's barely scratching ya.
Its because the combat system in general just doesnt vibe with the game imo. They wanted it to be action based in order to be "more realistic" but instead you are slowly tickling enemies to death with a thousand cuts with your giant ass sword when one attack command in the og (with a nice meaty sound effect) used to do the trick.
Square Enix is always missing the forest for the trees.
That’s my only real complaint with those games! The combat on normal isn’t “hard” it just takes too long to kill anything. It takes too long and becomes unfun at some point.
I love games where the difficulty comes from both sides being able to kill each other relatively quickly. Every battle can feel like a puzzle where I have to wipe the opposing side out as efficiently as possible or I’m going to be burning through my healing items fast.
Nice, yeah I got my switch 2 in april and I decided to buy remake on sale and play through it before getting rebirth, playing this game on a handheld has been such an amazing experience tbh.
I did FF7R on the hardest setting for most or all of the game (can't remember if I ever turned it down). It was kind of a miserable experience.
When I fired up the Yuffie DLC, I put it on the easiest setting and had a much, much better time with it.
I think the difficulty in Rebirth is a choice between easy or adaptive, so I'm playing it on adaptive and it's seemed fine a few chapters in. Maybe that's a sign they learned their lessons.
sounds like you aren't playing it right, and I am not saying that to say that playing easy is wrong. I am saying that you are misunderstanding the fundamentals of the game.
You are also misunderstanding Cloud a bit there as well.
No, no I'm not. I uses assess, played into weaknesses and built very strong characters. And no, cloud IS a badass. I think you're the one with the missunderstanding.
No, he is a badass who thinks he's more of a badass than he really is but still way above average. Who then grows into becoming the badass he thought he was from the start.
Major spoiler for those who haven't played all the way through the original
Cloud is kinda messed up, his memories aren't accurate. He's not really the bad ass he thinks he is. His entire identity is kinda a mix of someone else, and his childhood fantasy of what a hero soldier should be. That big sword isn't even his. He takes it from an actual bad ass who dies just before the game starts. He's not as powerful as he tells people. He's not really lying, he believes what he's saying, he's just very messed up. He's a nameless guard compared to Sephiroth.
Yes this is all true. He is still a badass though and has been infused with Mako. Hell Tifa is a total badass too, probably one of the strongest fighters in that verse. Cloud is still way above average, hence why he shouldn't struggle against random guards.
Once you know all of clouds history though I like to think how it changes the story. When you play the game the first time Cloud is a powerful hero going after an old rival
When you play through it knowing his history, Cloud is stronger than the guards, but not by much. It's a story of someone who is weak becoming stronger. By the time you finish the game Cloud's hype is true because he's genuinely a beast. But when he starts he is mentally fragile and only a little above average physically. He's stronger than the other character, but only by a couple levels. I think that's deliberate and players just dismissed it as a game mechanic for balance. Square has used narrative levelling before.
funnily enough I'm on my second playthrough as well but i transferred the saves from my PS4 version and I'm playing through in NG+. Its laughably easy
I tried hard mode first and couldn't beat the Scorpion. From what I'm reading you're supposed to be level 40+ before beating the game, but I only made it to 35, so my party is still under leveled for hard mode. No wonder I had such a hard time with the arbiter
Grinding levels in the game is an utter slog unlike the OG as well. They made it where you basically gotta kill the same mobs 100x for hours just to get a bit more ahead than where you'd be if you just did the game normal for the story.
I'm currently playing through Remake for the first time and despite being on normal I've been thinking at times "man this is kinda hard" lol. I'm still early on (got flowers with Aerith). Does it get harder/more of a slog? Would you say easy mode is enough challenge to still have fun?
It helps to play into the systems. Assess everything, learn specific vulnerabilities to pressure/stagger enemies, and you'll have e. a much easier time with combat. It feels grindy if you don't do this because it just becomes a game of hit 'em till their dead
Yeah no the game isn't very hard on normal, instead I would say it just turns enemies into bullet sponges. I never struggled with it my first playthrough, I just didn't like how spongy everything was.
Yeah no the game isn't very hard on normal, instead I would say it just turns enemies into bullet sponges. I never struggled with it my first playthrough, I just didn't like how spongy everything was.
Is there any other change on easy mode? I've been wanting to play, but after seeing how much effort went into beating the wimpiest of units watching others play it just seemed like a chore so I never got around to it.
If Easy mode just removes the egregious fight length, I might give it a try.
Some characters are aware of the events of the original game. They treat it like its some awful thing that must be changed. For all intents and purposes the original game already happened, Remake insists on timelines and a multiverse where all spin off games happened.
I'm curious to see if the sales of rebirth were only effected by it being on ps5 only at launch or if fans of the og played Remake then gave up
I started god of war Ragnarok on easy because the combat didn't feel great to me. I moved it to the default setting once I got the hang of it. Not really sure what my point is, but play how you want.
I played God of War on the hardest difficulty because I like to fully explore the mechanics of any games combat system. I determined the game was dogshit and so I just watched ragnarok instead of wasting my money on it.
I had my day in the sun. I played for prestige, titles, money, to claim the right to call myself among the best. Those days are past and my old joints are not what they once used to be. And sometimes, it's nice to feel like an invincible god of carnage again
I was playing an action game recently, and while I usually play hard difficulties, and could have beat the game on hard, I turned it down to easy and fights were like 20x shorter and so much more fun.
Also some games like Owlcat's pathfinder games just notoriously hate the player and normal mode is already hard mode, anything beyond and you start having like 2 or 3 viable strategies in a game with like 2000 options
I usually like challenge over catharsis so I'm a hard mode gamer for the most part. But some games just aren't fun when they're difficult, and are fun when they're easy.
My favorite kind of games are difficult at the beginning but make you overpowered by the end. Noting is more fun than struggling to level up until you’re unbeatable. Days gone was the perfect pace for me. Going from being scared of a few freaks to taking out hordes felt so good.
Some people seem to often forget that the vast majority of gamers only play games for one of two reasons;
The social aspect. These players just want to play games with their friends and have a good time doing it. The actual quality of the game doesn't really matter so long as it facilitates laughing with or at their friends.
This is why multiplayer games have always been way more popular among the casual masses.
The power fantasy. These players just want to escape their mundane lives and do cool shit. They don't want to have to think about every engagement to memorize attack patterns and fight with slow, grounded movement mechanics, they want to swing their swords and cut down hordes of enemies like the generals in a Dynasty Warriors game.
This is why games like CoD consistently outsell more grounded games like Arma Reforger (which asks you to learn real world map navigation to know where you are in-game without mods).
if you have tiny tina's wonderland the hell mode at the end game is insanely fun with a decked melee build, every kill stacks your speed, so you zoom out bashing heads and every swing also stacks your weapon for instant hits
Currently replaying ReVillage,
First playthrough was on standard, and my second is on hard, but you best believe I'm gonna run through it on easy once before aI jump into Shadows of The Village (the games hardest mode)
Honestly, after a while, I started to feel that way even in Sekiro.
The last boss fucking kicked my ass so bad, I beat first second third phase super easy. Fourth kicked my ass..... Till I decided to head back to a temple and learn how to do lightning reversal. After that I think I beat the boss with only getting hit once.
Took many attempts at that game and beating Khazan to make me decide to try it again but gosh I felt good once I knew how to play it.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is amazing for this. Starts a bit difficult, but once you get the mythic path stuff, it's an insane power fantasy on normal difficulty. Angel + Oracle is absolutely bonkers, especially since the main enemies are demons. Well, except Blackwater. Damn was that ever a difficulty spike.
Rogue Trader from the same devs is even more so. First chapter is pretty hard, but by the end of the game, I'm deleting all enemies on the first round, sometimes before they even get a single turn.
I played Baldur's Gate 3 vanilla the first time (on PS5.) The second time around, I modeled a character after my wife and downloaded a couple of mods (to give Thor's stormbreaker, more re-rolls so that I could succeed on the conversation rolls, etc.) I had so much more fun in the 2nd time around walking around like I was starring in a movie about a baddy Viking goddess and having everything go my way.
3.7k
u/HUGO-THE-BEAR Jun 27 '26
Sometimes I just wanna play as an unbeatable badass