Final Fantasy 7 is easily one of my favorite RPGs, but that doesn’t mean that every second of the game is perfect. While FF7‘s capacity to reinvent itself at every turn tends to stop it from ever dragging, virtually any game of its scope is going to be a little uneven, and it’s no exception. My biggest qualms tend to emerge fairly late in the experience, and with Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 on the way, it could finally have the opportunity to buff up the most repetitive elements.
The FF7 remake project has been undeniably impressive, but so far, it’s failed to match or top the original game for me. I’ve loved some of the new material, like FF7 Remake‘s opportunity to spend more time with the other members of Avalanche before the story really gets going. I’ve also been frustrated with some elements, from FF7 Rebirth‘s rigid structural framework to narrative changes that arguably undermine key themes. FF7 Remake Part 3, however, has the biggest opportunity to win me over, and it all has to do with the final stretch of combat encounters.
FF7’s Late-Game Combat Can Feel A Bit One-Note
Powerful Materia Is The Name Of The Game
For the most part, FF7‘s combat exceeded all my expectations. While I love a lot about FF9, its gameplay eroded my faith in Final Fantasy‘s classic active-time battle system, as slow battles and some structural decisions that I found frustrating made me dread random encounters. FF7 is much more focused on keeping up the pace and offering flexibility. Effective character builds don’t require all that much strategy, but I’m more interested in unique personalities than stats anyway.
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If FF9 beats FF7 in any combat regard, though, it’s the reduced focus on extremely powerful abilities. FF7 features plenty of relatively grounded, weapon-specific attacks, but by the time you reach the late-game, most of these will have fallen by the wayside. Ridiculously scaled materia and summons become the default way to defeat high-level enemies, turning every encounter into a season-ending climax of a shōnen anime.
Intense FF7 Encounters Ultimately Lose Their Impact
Peaks Don’t Exist Without Valleys
At times, this scale can be awesome, and it certainly pays off with Sephiroth’s solar-system-destroying Supernova. Repeated fight after fight, however, it doesn’t take long for it to all start feeling flat. I’m sure there are interesting ways to challenge yourself in late-game FF7 encounters, but the most obvious and strategically sound approach focuses on equipping and spamming a fairly limited variety of materia, and only minor tweaks in tactics are necessary depending on the encounter.
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Virtually every RPG can more or less be broken in this way, and for some people, building obscenely overpowered characters is part of the fun. In FF7, though, it’s just the path of least resistance. You’d have to go out of your way to completely avoid this trajectory, and it fast-tracks the final act to feature the most monotonous encounters of the game despite their dizzying scale.
FF7 Remake Part 3 Can Diversify Late-Game Combat
The Remake Trilogy Is On The Right Track
Based on the template of FF7 Remake and Rebirth, I’d be surprised if FF7 Remake Part 3 doesn’t alleviate this issue. While I have some concerns about how the franchise will manage to put another new spin on its evolving combat system, the three-part structure provides the resets necessary to stop this slide toward sameness. FF7 Rebirth successfully scaled back at the start before building to more complex possibilities than Remake, and there’s no reason Part 3 can’t do the same.
Final Fantasy 7‘s remake trilogy has already dialed down the power of many materia options, resulting in an action-oriented battle experience that incentivizes more diversity in play. For a Frankenstein mash-up of old-school features and new ideas, it’s all surprisingly seamless. The games are still sorely in need of swappable materia loadouts, but Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 shouldn’t have any trouble squeezing in some final quality-of-life adjustments and reinvigorating the variety in late-game combat at the same time.
