I went intoFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirthgiddy at the prospect of getting reacquainted with familiar characters and eager to see how much had changed compared to the original 1997 game and what would follow on from the events Remake set in motion. How will the world be fleshed out? What exciting new elements will be added? How much will the characters have evolved? Sadly, it didn’t take long before something soured my enthusiasm.
I’m talking about slow-moving scenes. The ones where you have to progress forward, but the character has impaired movement for whatever reason. It’s like that scene in Final Fantasy 9 where you’re playing as Oglop Cid and must slowly sneak past monsters to progress, punished the second you’re caught, as you have to restart over again and again. It stands out to me as the part I hated most about FF9.
If I had to pick my all-time worst occurrence of this trope, it’s from Nier Automata. As a machine at the beginning of the second playthrough, you’re struggling to get a bucket of oil to your struggling machine brother. The little stubby is painfully slow-moving, and god forbid you’re daft enough to trip on the pipe and have to restart. Just thinking about it makes me feel stressed all over again. I love Nier Automata, and it’s one of my all-time favourite games, yet that part continues to haunt me.
Rebirth utilises this mechanic to a near-similar level of frustration. There’s a sequence in the opening chapter where you’re limping around at a horrendously slow pace. When you finally get close to your intended destination, the game decides to laugh at you, causing the way forward to become blocked and forcing you to double back, still going at a snail’s pace as you search for a new, much, longer way around.
If it were just this single instance of drawn out exploration thrown in, I’d still moan about it, but at least I’d understand it. It’s used to mix things up a bit, and while I personally hate it even more than I hate escort missions, it’s a common enough thing that it’s acceptable. But there were three slow-moving sequences during my time in the first two chapters, and I didn’t even play all the way through them. That’s a lot of frustration to hit players with early onandin such a short time frame. While I imagine diehard fans will suck it up and begrudgingly progress, more casual players might be less forgiving.
I can’t help but wonder whether more of these sequences will be present throughout the rest of Rebirth. I sure hope not. If so, there’s a solid chance it will sour the entire experience. On the other hand, if it is just those few parts that I already experienced, it simply feels like a bad decision to clump them together.
We all love having something to hate in video games, and sometimes, getting a little frustrated can add to the overall experience. In some weird way, it’s nice to have something to complain about with others. I empathised with many a Nier player about that damn stubby scene. As much as I hate certain game mechanics like this though, they spice things up and throw you into unexpected challenges. But it’s when they’re featured too liberally that I get annoyed enough to vent about them in an article like this. Three times across two partial chapters is too much, and I pray it isn’t a sign of things to come in Rebirth.
