Myself, I hope it stubbornly clings to life for awhile longer, as the 3DS continues to be my favorite handheld console of all time, although the apparent abandonment of the 3-D part of the 3DS pains me greatly. The company has completely stopped producing New 3DS units in lieu of the somewhat cheaper 2DS, and the list of upcoming 2018 North American 3DS releases is woefully short. After all, Nintendo’s got the Switch, their strange handheld/home console Frankenstein’s monster of a machine. It’s not hard to find material online about the inevitable, impending death of the 3DS as a handheld console. I physically can’t play the whole game on Normal. Hopefully I can get used to Classic mode, even though it just feels like button mashing with training wheels. The kind of people who like action games, are they interested in this kind of beautifully rendered trip back to the 90s? There are a lot of interesting updates Square could have made to FFVII’s original battle system without scrapping it all together. So who is this game for? Those who have a nostalgic glow for FFVII, as I do, presumably also have nostalgia for the turn-based combat. The interconnected stat management and optimization present in RPGs is most satisfying and evident when a battle moves slowly enough that you can appreciate the effects. There are endless, fascinating permutations of turn-based systems. There are only so many ways to mash buttons. I’m annoyed at SquareEnix’s (and Nomura’s) general trend towards action systems, and indeed, the general JRPG trend towards action systems. Good question, Barret! The answer: slowly, painfully, and with a lot of loud cussing.

The target-switching in particular is a very tricky maneuver with how I have to hold the controller, and it made the boss fight against the Scorpion tank an interminable, four-try slog. Playing it on Normal was a fairly miserable, slightly painful experience for me. I held out hope for the Classic mode, but that’s barely approaching actual turn-based combat, although I’m going to play through the demo again from the beginning with Classic mode enabled from the start to get a better feel for it.

So the idea of “updating” a classic turn-based RPG that I am able to play so well with this button-mashy nightmare is very irritating. Final Fantasy games are generally a delight for me, because it’s everything I want in a game paired with gameplay that doesn’t mess up my hands. Now, I’m a bit biased when it comes to these sorts of action systems, because I have tendonitis, and games that are not turn-based are very difficult for me to play, even with the controller I’ve modded for the purpose. It’s worse than FFXV’s system (a game which I would like to play but still haven’t for more than two hours because the system is so frustrating to me). However, I loathe the Remake battle system, and I’m a bit upset about it. I’ve been looking forward to this game for a long time, because I loved FFVII, and I’ve always wanted a more fleshed-out version of the world with a translation that made a bit more sense (I didn’t actually understand Cloud’s story until years later when I played Crisis Core). I loved the atmosphere, the character models, (much of) the dialogue, the dynamic and orchestrated music, and the delight of seeing the little Lego people transformed into actual people. I feel like I’m the person that this game was aimed to ensnare, which is precisely why this demo was so disappointing. However, in the end, only certain characters get to use one of these animations once or twice in cutscenes and at a certain angle, resulting in a lot of unseen animations.–wait…Key card? When did THAT change? Goddamnit, GameStop. It seems that the developers made animations for each character to perform all the actions, like jumping, receiving damage to force the low HP pose, attacking without going into a battle movie, and more with the possibility of the game designers to use them as they see fit.

Stella glow xeno fight