The Honeymoon is over. Here are the problems with FF7RE (spoilers)

[CritialGaming]

Alright so you guys might have seen my review for Final Fantasy 7 Remake already and you should know that I really really liked the game coming off the first playthrough.

Since then I finished a second playthrough NG+ to clean up the collections that I missed the first time, and as I did so I began to see some things that I really didn't like and/or disappointed me about the Remake. So I thought I would post them here and see if you all agreed or disagreed.

Let's start with what Remake isn't. Unlike what they promised us at E3, FF7Remake is not as big as a normal Final Fantasy game and is NOT the full fledged Final Fantasy experience they said it was. We all had issues with the fact that this was going to be an episodic game as we knew there was no way it could be as long as a normal Final Fantasy game. But the thing is, FF7Remake isn't even as long as a SHORT Final Fantasy game. This is because there are fundamental things that every FF game has that just isn't here in the Remake.

For Example:
-No ultimate weapons for each character, nor any crazy side quests to get those weapons.

-No ultimate abilities, nor any side quests to get them. Sure there is an extra limit break but getting it is a crazy easy Colosseum fight done in less than 2 minutes per character.

-No Optional areas. Places like Gongaga, ancient forest, wutai, caves, and submarines from the original game. Obviously we are in Midgar only but we visit basically zero new optional locations in the Remake, there could have been so many optional areas like upper plate sectors, new slum towns, shinra labs. Instead we visit the same sectors and slums that appear in the original game even many areas EXTREMELY hand held preventing you for exploring very much.

Those are but a few things that the Remake doesn't have but appear in every other Final Fantasy game. So full fledged FF game Remake is not.

Additionally there are some issues I noticed much more on a second playthrough and a few chapters on Hard that really show cracks in my enjoyment of the game.

Summons kind of suck. They appear so slowly and don't do much, that if you are playing correctly (especially required on hard mode) the summon wont have time to do anything by the time it is summoned and then gets it's ultimate attack. Usually your characters core tactics and magic are what will get the job done, a summon will not save you nor really help and they seem to exist as a spectacle more than anything else.

The lack of evasion is the real challenge for the game. Many enemies are simply too fast, or unleash their attack with too much tracking in order to be evaded. Meaning your first instinct to get out of the way of such things as usually wrong as blocking is the better choice. Perfect example is trying to get away from Hell House's charge attack, or get out of range of Guard Scorpion's EMP pulse. I'm not saying that damage cant be avoided, it can, but only if you are proactively evading attacks. Basically if you aren't already avoiding an upcoming attack, then you will be hit.

Excessive railroading. 90% of the game you are on a track, and the game does not want you going off any of it. This normally doesn't bother me much, I didn't have a problem with the hallways of FF13, but FF7Remake makes a lot of stuff LOOK more explorable than it is. Especially when you go looking for areas in the original game that aren't here. Like the Train tunnel that dead ends with infiinitely spawning guards you can grind for exp from the original game. Try running backwards in the Remake and you are jerked back with a slap saying "NO!" Try to go back to the church after fleeing Reno, "NO!".

No grinding. Okay this is probably just a negative for me, but one thing that made me fall in love with JRPG's in the original game was the ability to grind. My friends used to have contests to see who could get the highest level before you left Midgar. It made me love grinding, love being able to put in work to completely destroy an upcoming boss. It's not for everyone and I get that. And grinding should never be a requirement, but at least let it be an option. Not here though, enemies do not respawn, and the only place to grind is the battle areas and that forces you through cut scenes and loading making it overly annoying.

Challenge through annoyance. Many enemies in the game actively screw with your combat potential. This appears as early as Chapter 3 in which enemies can fly/climb out of reach of your melee characters. While in some situations they will jump to hit flying enemies this is inconsistant as they will not jump to hit an enemy on the wall. Additionally there are a lot of encounters with enemies that will periodically just be immune, but the game seems to make them immune for long periods of time. I had an issues where a crab in the sewers just guarded forever making him immmune to even Barret. And I was forced to hit him with cloud to eat the counter attack and get him out of it, but then it immediately went back into guard again. I know use magic, the problem is on Hard you NEED your MP and it sucks being forced to waste precious MP to kill an enemy you can easily defeat using normal abilities simply because it wants to be a guarding dickhead. Not to mention the robots that have an anti-melee aura around them once staggered, and while stagger they specifically target Barrett with missiles so your time to take advantage of the stagger is wasted.

The AI sucks and the game knows it. Enemies will not target characters at random, at least not for long and instead seem to always prioritize the character you control. Even if they are beating the crap out of Tifa, they will often drop her like a bad break up and immediate b-line straight for whoever you just swapped over to. Needless to say, this makes building that precious ATB gauge frustrating at times because rather than being able to capitialize on the enemy attacking one party member while you build meter for another, the enemies will come charging over to your new character like you insulted their momma. Meanwhile if you as the player want to serve as a distraction and guard or be defensive while the enemies focus you, your AI controlled characters will gladly stand in the background and watch. It's like a bunch of kids watching a fight in high school, they all just watch and posture and talk about how much better they would do in the same fight. Thanks guys.

Finally we have the side quests. They are bad, simply bad. The NPC's are stiff, the quests are utterly boring and mundane, but worst of all they aren't meaningful in reward (except Chadley, he can stay). What do you get from side quests really? Nothing a little bit of gil, maybe a useless accessory. Why couldn't there be meaningful reasons to do these quests? The game talks about building reputation as a merc, so why don't you build that rep? As you grow ranks with the people as a merc, you could take on bigger and better jobs. Like the hunt system in previous games. And utilize more areas! I mean fuck, just because the quest starts in Sector 7 slums, doesn't mean they couldn't let you get on a train to go to the plate and rob a Shrina guardhouse, or dive into the sewers to handle a new monster bigger and badder than Abzu. Side quests can have such potential, and they just waste time here. They offer nothing, they serve no point, hell they don't even award EXP bonuses to give you extra levels. Except Chadley, he can stay.

It's weird because I didn't notice any of this on the first playthrough, I was so blinded with joy of seeing my favorite video game characters in new life. But that quickly falls away with second and third playthroughs as you just start getting annoyed by all the stuff the game DOESN'T do or doesn't let you do.

And Square's words kept nagging me on my second playthrough as I looked at the play clock and realized I was about to finish my second run in about 13hours. "Full Fledged Final Fantasy experience", but where is all the stuff that Final Fantasy games are supposed to have? Where are the secret items, hidden OP materia, super moves, optional areas?

They spoke about expanding Midgar, yet we don't go to Sector 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 plates, nor do we see the slums of Sectors 1, 2, 3, 4, 8. So what did they expand? How is this Midgar different from the Midgar in the original game? Because we got to see one street on the Sector 7 plate? Because we explore an underground lab a little?

I gotta say, I hope they improve this in the next game.

 

[sXeth]

That was one of the main bits I noticed, the expanded work just felt like filler. Sure, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie have characters now. but they all are one note stock character types. Sidequests are just MMO quality stuff to grind you up to the top tier spells/abilities (which is going to produce its own headache in any potential sequels, since you've already got stuff that was mid-late disk 2). Also all the sidequesting kind of gnaws at the pacing that made that section a standout intro in the original. Yeah, sidequests are kind of an out-of-time experience in any RPG, but it makes everything feel sluggish when the entirety of this game is happening in like, 4 days or so in theory.


The remixing of the story I suspect is only going to further bite them down the line. Even taking out the blatant time-travel/alternate timeline jibby-jabb, there's other subtle alterations too. Some complexity is lost by having Shinra actually be the bad guys blowing up the reactors, slicing up a previously thought-provoking dynamic into a black-white thing by painting Avalanche as pure victims in a conspiracy rather then well-intentioned extremists. Another case is Cloud, who in FF7RE does appear to be a legitimate SOLDIER, or at least as competent/more competent then one, in the OG he was faking it til eventually making it. (This actually leads to the hilarious bit of nonsense where he can jump 50 feet between the speeding motorbikes, but on the immediate next mission gets separated by that tiny bit of a gap between him and Barret & Tifa.)



The combat in general feels like its fighting itself. AI is definitely not up to snuff. Having magic both on the gauge and taking up MP seems like overkill in resource management. And a lot of whiffs are down to the enemy just doing whatever, whipping across the battelfield to dodge, or suddenly engaging a defensive measure (Hell House god mode)

 

[Yoshi178]

You just press square to win is a pretty big problem with it

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The lack of evasion is the real challenge for the game. Many enemies are simply too fast, or unleash their attack with too much tracking in order to be evaded. Meaning your first instinct to get out of the way of such things as usually wrong as blocking is the better choice. Perfect example is trying to get away from Hell House's charge attack, or get out of range of Guard Scorpion's EMP pulse. I'm not saying that damage cant be avoided, it can, but only if you are proactively evading attacks. Basically if you aren't already avoiding an upcoming attack, then you will be hit.

Finally we have the side quests. They are bad, simply bad. The NPC's are stiff, the quests are utterly boring and mundane, but worst of all they aren't meaningful in reward (except Chadley, he can stay). What do you get from side quests really? Nothing a little bit of gil, maybe a useless accessory. Why couldn't there be meaningful reasons to do these quests?

That's why I didn't like the demo because the action combat part of the combat wasn't good. You couldn't dodge stuff because the enemies didn't have good enough telegraphing animations like that EMP pulse attack or as you mentioned the tracking. I really just wanted to play the game watching all the "normal" attacks happening and stepping in to do the important stuff using the ATB special attacks, using spells, using items, etc. But, you could only play that way on Easy mode. FF games need to pick either to be action games or strategy combat games, mixing both doesn't work because being fast-paced and action-y game actively hinders how much strategy there can be while the strategy/turn-based aspects make the action combat less satisfying. Each aspect is trying to accomplish the thing that directly hinders the other.

The sidequests themselves should be worth doing because the quest themselves are good. Sure, it's nice to get a decent reward but a good reward doesn't make a shitty quest good. All content in any game should be good and worth doing because it's fun/enjoyable/engaging. A 20-hour game with nothing but good content is better than 40 hours with only 20 good hours.

 

[stroopwafel]

I really like the combat it feels like a novel twist on an old formula. You have to figure out which attacks cause a stagger state with enemies being real sponges and the 'real time' combat basically serves no other purpose than wait for the ATB meter to fill. Divide this over different characters that you're switching between and you really have something of a tactical puzzle akin to a Persona/SMT game where you also have to exploit an enemy's weakness. Really different from say Dragon Quest 11 where I was literally using the same attack commands for almost the entire game.

As for the game's length and linearity I do agree with this sentiment but I think it is the price for having such insane production values. I mean, it took them 5 years to make this with what is probably a huge team and infinite budget. I felt they squeezed everything out of that capacity. Expecting something to look and feel like FF7 Remake and play like the original is an unrealistic expectation I think. The game also comes out a week after RE3 Remake which has a similar problem after 3 years of development. Games that costs way more to make and also take much longer to develop but provide less content than the original.

For me most of the enjoyment came from revisiting some of those iconic moments and locations in the glorious production values of the remake and the 'twist' almost felt like a commentary on this. I was never really that invested in the story or Final Fantasy in general so the lack of content(which I think there is still a substantial amount of) compared to the original didn't bother me that much espescially since the development team also communicated that properly.

So yeah, definitely looking forward to the next chapter but I still think it will be just as linear and comparitavely short. The workload and development costs with these almost photo realistic graphics must be crazy and this must only be increasing with a new generation of hardware.

 

[Dalisclock]

Alright so you guys might have seen my review for Final Fantasy 7 Remake already and you should know that I really really liked the game coming off the first playthrough.

Since then I finished a second playthrough NG+ to clean up the collections that I missed the first time, and as I did so I began to see some things that I really didn't like and/or disappointed me about the Remake. So I thought I would post them here and see if you all agreed or disagreed.

Let's start with what Remake isn't. Unlike what they promised us at E3, FF7Remake is not as big as a normal Final Fantasy game and is NOT the full fledged Final Fantasy experience they said it was. We all had issues with the fact that this was going to be an episodic game as we knew there was no way it could be as long as a normal Final Fantasy game. But the thing is, FF7Remake isn't even as long as a SHORT Final Fantasy game. This is because there are fundamental things that every FF game has that just isn't here in the Remake.


-No Optional areas. Places like Gongaga, ancient forest, wutai, caves, and submarines from the original game. Obviously we are in Midgar only but we visit basically zero new optional locations in the Remake, there could have been so many optional areas like upper plate sectors, new slum towns, shinra labs. Instead we visit the same sectors and slums that appear in the original game even many areas EXTREMELY hand held preventing you for exploring very much.


Excessive railroading. 90% of the game you are on a track, and the game does not want you going off any of it. This normally doesn't bother me much, I didn't have a problem with the hallways of FF13, but FF7Remake makes a lot of stuff LOOK more explorable than it is. Especially when you go looking for areas in the original game that aren't here. Like the Train tunnel that dead ends with infiinitely spawning guards you can grind for exp from the original game. Try running backwards in the Remake and you are jerked back with a slap saying "NO!" Try to go back to the church after fleeing Reno, "NO!".

How Long to Beat has the game between 30-40 hours with completion at like 55ish hours(and normally HLTB numbers tend to be lower then my own) Which is about on par with a lot of the classic games in the series. At least, I remember finishing a lot of the older ones between 40-50 hours on the in-game clock and that was after a bit of grinding and faffing about once I got the airship in lategame.

But what really gets me is if the game is rather linear and railroaded, exactly how are they stretching it out that much using just midgar? I assumed it was that long because you got to run around and explore a bit when you weren't following the plotted line, but it sounds like here you're basically in a tunnel for much of the game, albeit a very pretty one. Are there just THAT many cutscenes(starts getting MGS4 flackbacks)?

 

[dscross]

How Long to Beat has the game between 30-40 hours with completion at like 55ish hours(and normally HLTB numbers tend to be lower then my own) Which is about on par with a lot of the classic games in the series. At least, I remember finishing a lot of the older ones between 40-50 hours on the in-game clock and that was after a bit of grinding and faffing about once I got the airship in lategame.

But what really gets me is if the game is rather linear and railroaded, exactly how are they stretching it out that much using just midgar? I assumed it was that long because you got to run around and explore a bit when you weren't following the plotted line, but it sounds like here you're basically in a tunnel for much of the game, albeit a very pretty one. Are there just THAT many cutscenes(starts getting MGS4 flackbacks)?

I'm sorry, but with all the random battles included, the grinding, not knowing your way around the map/where everything is and secret bosses/weapons, the PSone originals took waaaaay more than 40 hours. If you cheat and fast forward through all the random battles and skip all the optional bosses and side missions etc, as well as know your way around the world map precisely without getting lost, you can probably do it in a lot shorter. I definitely put much more time than that into 7, 8 and 9. The SNES and NES ones are shorter though, although they still take 50+ hours your first time if you are trying to do everything.

 

[Yoshi178]

You just press square to win is a pretty big problem with it

You don't know what the fuck you are talking about so if you want to provide input, then maybe think about a response instead of just spouting trash.

oh i'm sorry, i didn't know you were the god of "having an opinion" around here.

 

[Hawki]

You just press square to win is a pretty big problem with it

You don't know what the fuck you are talking about so if you want to provide input, then maybe think about a response instead of just spouting trash.

Calm down Tifa, Yoshi isn't after Cloud.

 

[dscross]

You just press square to win is a pretty big problem with it

You don't know what the fuck you are talking about so if you want to provide input, then maybe think about a response instead of just spouting trash.

Calm down Tifa, Yoshi isn't after Cloud.

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

 

[sXeth]

But what really gets me is if the game is rather linear and railroaded, exactly how are they stretching it out that much using just midgar? I assumed it was that long because you got to run around and explore a bit when you weren't following the plotted line, but it sounds like here you're basically in a tunnel for much of the game, albeit a very pretty one. Are there just THAT many cutscenes(starts getting MGS4 flackbacks)?

Essentially where the original all took place at night and during the reactor missions, this one has the daytime where Cloud runs around being a mercenary. Doing primarily a lot of fetch quests or generic monster hunting.

 

[Hawki]

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

No idea. I've never played FF7.

 

[meiam]

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

The game had a pseudo relationship meter running in the background which would determine which girl Cloud would go on a date mid game depending on how you treated each of them. Aerith had the highest base value so most people would end up going on date with her unless you were a jerk to her, then Tifa had the second highest and if you were a jerk to both of them you'd get Barret, who did not want to be there.

 

[Dalisclock]

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

The game had a pseudo relationship meter running in the background which would determine which girl Cloud would go on a date mid game depending on how you treated each of them. Aerith had the highest base value so most people would end up going on date with her unless you were a jerk to her, then Tifa had the second highest and if you were a jerk to both of them you'd get Barret, who did not want to be there.

I've heard the Barret date was kinda hilarious because of this. Probably not worth the price of being a Jerk to both Tifa and Aeris though

 

[Dalisclock]

How Long to Beat has the game between 30-40 hours with completion at like 55ish hours(and normally HLTB numbers tend to be lower then my own) Which is about on par with a lot of the classic games in the series. At least, I remember finishing a lot of the older ones between 40-50 hours on the in-game clock and that was after a bit of grinding and faffing about once I got the airship in lategame.

But what really gets me is if the game is rather linear and railroaded, exactly how are they stretching it out that much using just midgar? I assumed it was that long because you got to run around and explore a bit when you weren't following the plotted line, but it sounds like here you're basically in a tunnel for much of the game, albeit a very pretty one. Are there just THAT many cutscenes(starts getting MGS4 flackbacks)?

I'm sorry, but with all the random battles included, the grinding, not knowing your way around the map/where everything is and secret bosses/weapons, the PSone originals took waaaaay more than 40 hours. If you cheat and fast forward through all the random battles and skip all the optional bosses and side missions etc, as well as know your way around the world map precisely without getting lost, you can probably do it in a lot shorter. I definitely put much more time than that into 7, 8 and 9. The SNES and NES ones are shorter though, although they still take 50+ hours your first time if you are trying to do everything.

I was thinking the SNES/NES ones, though FF7 definately took a while if you did put in the time getting giant chickens to screw each other.

That's what FF7 was right? a really expensive chicken breeding/fight...er, racing simulator?

 

[dscross]

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

The game had a pseudo relationship meter running in the background which would determine which girl Cloud would go on a date mid game depending on how you treated each of them. Aerith had the highest base value so most people would end up going on date with her unless you were a jerk to her, then Tifa had the second highest and if you were a jerk to both of them you'd get Barret, who did not want to be there.

Yeah, I meant later in the game I thought I recalled it revealed how Cloud felt about Tifa when you played as Tifa briefly. She goes into Cloud's psyche nearer the back end of the game when she's rescuing him from the lifestream.

 

[meiam]

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

The game had a pseudo relationship meter running in the background which would determine which girl Cloud would go on a date mid game depending on how you treated each of them. Aerith had the highest base value so most people would end up going on date with her unless you were a jerk to her, then Tifa had the second highest and if you were a jerk to both of them you'd get Barret, who did not want to be there.

Yeah, I meant later in the game I thought I recalled it revealed how Cloud felt about Tifa when you played as Tifa briefly. She goes into Cloud's psyche nearer the back end of the game when she's rescuing him from the lifestream.

Oh yeah as a kid and probably teenager (when he goes back to his hometown he hide that he's just a lowly grunt from Tifa). It's not quite clear as an adult since Cloud is, to put it mildly, a bit of a mess after the event of Nibelheim. Similarly the game never really confirm or deny if Tifa feel anything for Cloud (they certainly don't seem to have any relationship in the movie).

Looking at it in a meta way, square probably didn't want to confirm which waifu Cloud would end up with since that usually doesn't help them in anyway but piss off people who were pinning for the spurned waifu. So everybody's feeling toward everybody is left vague on purpose.

 

[dscross]

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

The game had a pseudo relationship meter running in the background which would determine which girl Cloud would go on a date mid game depending on how you treated each of them. Aerith had the highest base value so most people would end up going on date with her unless you were a jerk to her, then Tifa had the second highest and if you were a jerk to both of them you'd get Barret, who did not want to be there.

Yeah, I meant later in the game I thought I recalled it revealed how Cloud felt about Tifa when you played as Tifa briefly. She goes into Cloud's psyche nearer the back end of the game when she's rescuing him from the lifestream.

Oh yeah as a kid and probably teenager (when he goes back to his hometown he hide that he's just a lowly grunt from Tifa). It's not quite clear as an adult since Cloud is, to put it mildly, a bit of a mess after the event of Nibelheim. Similarly the game never really confirm or deny if Tifa feel anything for Cloud (they certainly don't seem to have any relationship in the movie).

Looking at it in a meta way, square probably didn't want to confirm which waifu Cloud would end up with since that usually doesn't help them in anyway but piss off people who were pinning for the spurned waifu. So everybody's feeling toward everybody is left vague on purpose.

I suppose, but Tifa was the only one left at the end bar Yuffie (and surely no-one cared about her?).

 

[immortalfrieza]

Was cloud not secretly in love with Tifa in the original since he was a child, not the other way around? They got closer because they fought together, didn't they (and because they had known each other a long time)? Have they made it the other way around in the remake? Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I seem to remember that.

It was made pretty clear through all the flashback scenes that they were both in love with each other ever since they were children. Then Cloud went to join SOLDIER and it all went to hell for him. After which Cloud is too royally screwed up and obsessed with Sephiroth to have a real relationship with anyone until the end of the game where they had a nice romantic scene between them that all but confirmed Tifa and Cloud were an item. It helps that Aeris dies less than a third of the way through the game and removes herself as a rival for Cloud's affections.

Then of course Advert Children throws out all of Cloud's character development in favor of making him a wangsty emo massive exaggeration of his original character again, so naturally Tifa and Cloud aren't together at that point.

 

[balladbird]

My own thoughts on the issues brought up:

1.) regarding length: You won't hear me defend the idea to make FF7 an episodic game. I hated it when it was announced and I hate it now. That said, length wasn't a downside here for me. I'm a slow player and a completionist, but it took me 55 hours to finish the game, doing all side quests/VR battles/colliseum rounds, on normal difficulty. That's not long for a JRPG by any stretch, but it's not short, either, even by FF standards. For in-series comparison, it took me only about 5 hours longer to get the platinum trophy in FF8, and it's only 10-15 hours less than it took me to complete all side content in FF9. There's a lot here, for what it is, even if I would have rather not had 1/3 of 1/3 of a game adapted into a full product.

The lack of ultimate weapons and lackluster summons can be explained by this still being disc one, which again isn't something I'm happy about, but is logical given what the product is. Exploration being limited is also somewhat of a bummer, but this point in the main game had very little exploration to be done, either. Things don't really start to open up for quite a while.

2.)Summons: I'm not really an expert here. I almost never use summons, unless they're absurdly broken like knights of the round. In OG final fantasies I summon each one once to see the animation, but then never use them again, because sitting through the animation more than a handful of times was a chore. That said, I didn't hate summons here. Very FF XII of them, but they had their uses.

3.) Railroading: Can't really defend this one, except by again pointing out that this point in the game they're adapting was pretty linear as well... and honestly a lot of FF set pieces tend to be more linear than they at first appear, with the layouts just twisted to make them seem more open than they are.

4.) Grinding: You absolutely can grind in this game. Backtracking across areas where monsters spawn will see them spawn again. Outside of hard difficulty there's not a lot of reason *to* grind, but you can if you want to, albeit only in certain chapters.

5.) AI: It's not great, but it's servicable. AI controlled characters are pretty good at blocking/dodging when they have to, the game bull-rushing whoever you control is certainly an annoying issue, but my only real complaint about the AI is that I wish they would use their vanilla attacks more often without being controlled. I actually prefer that they don't use their ATB moves without being told to, since ATBs are a precious resource.

I dunno, the game was better than I feared it would be, and justified the price I paid for it... the twist at the end was the only thing that kinda has me iffy. saving Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie from their fates was utterly cowardly and limp, and if, as I suspect, they intend to use this to save Aerith from her fate, as well, then that runs the very real risk of being story-ruining.

That said, I'm not in the habit of preemptively getting mad about things, so I'll wait and see. It was all very "kingdom hearts bullshit", but overall I'm neutral on it at the moment.