Final Fantasy 7 Remake, with all of its fantastic action RPG combat, is making its way to the Switch 2 (and Xbox) soon. And based on how the Switch 2 is handling modern AAA games, it should be up to the challenge of delivering some quality visuals and stable performance, even on the go. But it sounds like this port is worried about something else that might not be up to the challenge: You. With new difficulty options that allow players to dramatically reduce just about any level of challenge in the game, series antagonist Sephiroth sure is in for a world of unfair hurt. Maybe he’ll review bomb the game over it.
As reported by GameSpot, the upcoming port has a new menu called “Streamlined Progression” which, as the name implies, gives you various options to reduce or eliminate challenge in the game and make defeating bosses and progressing through the story much, much easier. If you activate every option in the menu, you’ll basically be playing in “God Mode,” with perpetual max HP and MP, infinite money and recovery items, and attacks that always deal 9,999 damage to your opponents. I guess that works for those who just want to focus on the story, but at this point, I have to wonder, does it make more sense to just watch a Let’s Play instead?
FF7R, especially on its hard difficulty and during some of its late game bosses on normal mode, can be challenging. And I do like it when games grant modular levels of control over difficulty (I also used to love breaking games with my GameShark back in the day), but for me, such options are typically at their best when they aid you in learning the mechanics of a game by scaling down a challenge so you can take it on. The suite of options in the “Streamlined Progression” menu, however, which do things like keep you persistently at max health and damage output, do very little to “streamline” anything; instead, any and all challenge is just completely removed.
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This new mode also arrives as we’re in the middle of some hot discourse™ about difficulty, mostly because one little hornet’s big adventure was a bit tougher than some were expecting.
In my opinion, activating these Streamlined Progression options in FF7R would put you just a step away from letting the game play itself, at least if all the options are enabled. Even individually, so many of these options are just “on/off” toggles for godly powers, so they’re not going to aid in mastering the game. Which, again, if a player has no interest in doing, I have to wonder if it just makes more sense to watch a cutscene compilation at that point.. Managing MP, for example, is a core facet of FF7R’s combat. Having it always at max can easily teach bad habits and take away from what the game’s combat is asking you to do. Same thing with dishing out 9,999 damage with every hit, which doesn’t “streamline” build-crafting, but rather makes it irrelevant. I would’ve preferred to see difficulty sliders, perhaps a guarantee of a damage minimum that encourages the player to learn how to build more power while still providing some assistance. Same with having an always-full Limit Break meter. Why not instead just have the bar filled up faster so new players get a better sense of what increases the meter and what the pay off for it is?
Not all of us are type-A overachievers who want to take on the toughest challenges, sure, but part of what makes the power fantasy in FF7R work is that Cloud and co. aren’t strong and capable because they’re all wearing plot armor, but because we as players invest our attention and energy into gaining competency or mastery over its complex systems. That’s why defeating Sephiroth is so satisfying; not because the narrative simply designates us as heroes, but because we lived up to the challenge of becoming heroes.
