I love JRPGs - and RPGs generally - but they're hard to fit into my life, and I know there are many in a similar position. The director of the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy is aware of this plight and made sure the latest release of the first installment of the redux of Cloud’s grand adventure had some features to help ease the pressure.
On Twitter, Naoki Hamaguchi, the co-director on Final Fantasy 7 Remake and now development lead on the remaining entries, thanked players for picking up the recent Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2 versions. Coming out almost five years after the game landed on PlayStation 4 and PC, these ports contain a number of improvements and tweaks.
Among them are additional options to streamline the gameplay. There's a veritable god mode, for instance, that gives you full HP and MP, and allows you to spam special moves as much as you like. Suddenly, those frustrating boss fights and bigger encounters are just fancy light shows.
Cut-scenes can be fast–forwarded as well, to maximize the amount of actual playing you can do in a limited timeframe. Updates went out on PlayStation 4, 5, and PC to make sure those fans have access to these changes too, compounding additions that came with the PS5 release. Hamaguchi comments that this is all to allow people play the game at their own pace. He even jokes some might actually be able to finish Remake in one day now.
If you push hard enough, I think he could be right. Having your ATB on max throughout, as well as being able to constantly use your most powerful abilities with zero concern for mana or damage, is basically turning the adventure into a sprint through Midgar.
I'm half-tempted to try a speedrun, while my backlog glares at me menacingly. What matters here is giving people the opportunity to become engrossed in an excellent game more conveniently than before. There's no greater materia to be found than that.
