For all the talk that this is an action game it plays like a turn based game due to its defensive nature. You have to block gun attacks in normal mode and when they stop shooting, you attack, using your turn. There's a rhythm to combat if block -> attack -> bait in punisher more to punish a melee attack -> counter -> block again. It's pretty good and all the systems come together.
I mean, it's not an action game at all under any sort of scrutiny. It's a turn based game that has real time elements appended onto it, but those real time elements just boil down to "dont stand in the fire" and maybe "kill the adds".
When you take a game that is turn based and adapt it very directly and literally it to occur in real time, you're left with an MMO. And that's really what it plays like, the major bosses all have a focus on the most efficient way of sponging damage while staying out of the fire. You could drag and drop all the major VR battles into FFXIV and they would play exactly the same (except FFXIV raids have more unique per fight mechanics, lol), even more so than something like FF12 which never used real time MMO boss fight tropes in that way, sticking to straight number crunching.
That's why I wince at every attempt to compare this to actual action games that have hitstun and real dodging like KH or even FFXV. It's an offline MMO with your spammable moves bound to square and triangle. Which, fine, i'm not saying that's bad, but it's seemingly only that way to convince people who just start the game that they're playing an action title rather than just cutting all the boring meter building/cooldown/MMO chaff for a more to the point turn based system. It's a roundabout approach that only makes sense if the developers are more concerned with how it's perceived than how tightly it actually plays. (They're totally in the right given the success of the game)
I'm fine with all of this. FFXII also had real time elements tied to menu based combat. That's all I've wanted from the game. I'm fine with that. Why does it being mmo-esque matter? I don't want an action game. I got what I wanted.
I'm confused by your post. It comes off as an endorsement in my eyes. "You could drop the VR missions in FFXIV and they'd play the same" Hell yeah. What I've played of XIV is basically more XII system.
It's not really meant as an endorsement or not, just an analysis of what the combat system is in practice, versus what is initially impressed on the player by having the enemies up to the guard scorpion die to your square button and vestigal mechanics like Cloud's dodge (and, you know, how it was marketed as an Action-RPG).
You say you weren't looking for an action game, but you definitely still got one, technically speaking. It's just in the vein of world of warcraft rather than kingdom hearts. When you aren't taking your turn, theres going to be lots of very straightforward "enemy drops pain circles on the ground, time to move" and "enemy is charging in a straight line across the arena, gotta move" which are pretty basic action interactions that occur outside of the numbers framework everything else runs on. This about as far as that style of fight design can go given that it has to operate under the assumption your characters have no reliable way to influence the behaviour of your superarmored enemies. In an MMO, this is a necessary compromise, allowing a game to still be possible when 25 seperate players are all trying to punch the same target while they want people to wake up and not just do their spell rotation. In FFVII ReMake, this accomplishes largely the same effect, giving you something to do during the downtime of firing off your spells and taking your turn.
I think invoking FFXII is actually really appropriate, because I'm of the belief FFXII would not be a better game if I had to manually take control of each of my characters to steer them away from aoe's. I think that would have added a bunch of banal, noninteresting busywork between the actual RPG mechanics that I'm invested in, and would have lengthened the fights of a game whose engagements take longer than they should. I feel similarly here, but obviously that's just personal taste, not some kind of objective indictment of Remake.
