Sony is relying heavily on the popularity of Final Fantasy VII Remake to create visibility and increase the excitement around the Square Enix title. During the night of September 13-14, a 47-minute Special Stage was held at TGS 2019 in the presence of Yoshinori Kitase. It was an opportunity to show off new gameplay features, while presenting the visual redesign of FF7 Remake.
The most interesting new feature in this presentation was the reveal of a 'Classic Mode', via the same demo shown at E3 2019 and gamescom 2019.
Clearly inspired by the original Final Fantasy VII battle format, this variant will allow the player not to have to manage basic commands, defense and attack, all of which will be managed by the AI.
Instead, it allows you to focus on the strategic aspect of battles, by managing only special abilities that require spending the ATB bar.
Those who don't like the new action-oriented gameplay will be able to turn to this more old-school variant in the menu.
In addition to being able to discover the new menus and Barret without his glasses, several minigames have also been unveiled.
Starting at 31:00 in the video above, you can see that the classic squat challenge from the Wall Market gym returns.
The last big part of Kitase's presentation ended with a boss fight: Cloud, Tifa and Aerith versus Abzu in the sewers.
Visually the fight is beautiful, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. We also discovered new abilities for each of the protagonists. These fit perfectly with the characteristics and personalities of the characters, Cloud seems overpowering with his Buster Sword, Tifa is very mobile, and Aerith can attack from a distance with her basic attacks.
The dynamism of the combat looks impressive. What we wanted to discover the most in this phase of the gameplay: Summoning. The animation of Cloud summoning Ifrit is seamless, and unintrusive.
Summons join the team as a fourth party member. The player won't be able to control them directly, but can input ATB gauge-attacks. At the end of the allotted time, the summon will disappear by triggering its signature Final Attack.
Once again, Final Fantasy VII Remake reassures us and creates real hype. Tetsuya Nomura and his team seem to have taken into account the remarks and requests of fans, and the result looks spectacular.
Final Fantasy VII Remake comes to PS4 on April 10, 2020.
In a message from the development team, Square Enix have announced that the release date for the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake will be pushed back to April 10, 2020.
