1) Grind Alternatives

When you put aside completionist tendencies, Xenoblade did a lot to kill the monotony of grinding.

The grind is the number one obstacle to the enjoyment and completion of most RPGs. In classic Final Fantasy games, leveling usually devolves into entering random encounters against clearly outclassed opponents, mashing the confirm button several times to wipe them out, and sitting through the fanfare and exp/money/etc notifications. Leveling and increasing your character's stats is a necessity in this style of game, but does it have to be so soul crushingly boring and needlessly long?

No, it doesn't. Bravely Default had the right idea in making it so you could adjust your encounter rates, fast forward through battles, and use auto-combat. However, Xenoblade Chronicles had the best ideas for alleviating the grind, and shares a combat system more in line with what you can likely expect from Remake. Progression wasn't exclusively tied to grinding weaklings to dust, players could also explore and discover land marks, do quests, hunt notorious monsters, or complete achievements.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is ripe for  such additions. If you're going through the trouble of beautifying the world, you might as well encourage exploration. Grant large AP bonuses for discovering naturally occurring materia at mako springs scattered across the world. Reward sizable amounts of gil and EXP for hunting down some of Hojo's twisted creations. Give EXP, Gil, and AP in decent amounts for discovering and engaging in the world's quirkier aspects, like hitting Red XIII with the ball at Costa del Sol or being chosen by Don Corneo.

There are so many things that could be used as ways to improve your characters other than grinding trash enemies, so let's see them in Remake.
 

That's a wrap, so what did you think? You know the drill, sound off in the comments to let us know, and while you're at it, tell us what you'd like to see change in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

2) Fast Travel

Xenoblade Chronicles struck a great balance between coddling and convenience with its fast travel.

Seriously, fast travel has to be a standard issue thing in this day and age. Even if it isn't a seamless, open world game, there needs to be a fast way to get back to Point A from Point B or C. Having to trek back and forth over the same areas gets tedious, even for the most gorgeous of areas.

I'm well aware that there's a such thing as good backtracking, or instances where it becomes necessary to the game's plot. In that case, just disable fast travel to those areas until the event is over. That will force players to take the desired, story required approach, such as parachuting into Midgar.

One of the biggest complaints in RPGs is often the time killed by backtracking and the grind, this change would go a long way towards alleviating one of those issues.
 

3) A seamless, open world

They've been practicing open world design for over a decade now,

This one's a little anticlimactic after the others, but not every change has to be a unique little snowflake. Seamless worlds are becoming standard for RPGs these days, and Final Fantasy 7 had one of the largest, most alive worlds in the PS1 era. It's only fitting for the world of Gaia to get the seamless treatment it deserves as a member of video game royalty.

A seamless world isn't just for pretty looks either, it allows for battles like the proposed Diamond Weapon change from the section on time constraints.. It may also play into a later change on this list.
 

4) More time constraints

Meteor should invoke a somewhat similar sense of dread for the player.

Oh boy, more controversy. Hear me out though. Meteor is supposed to be an ever encroaching threat in Final Fantasy 7, but it will never, ever fall no matter how much time you spend obsessing over your Chocobo breeding or gaming at the Gold Saucer. That fact kind of undermines the whole experience.

Instances of timers used to build stress are already used in several places throughout Final Fantasy 7. There's the escape from the first reactor, the train battle, getting the huge materia from the rocket, and the Emerald Weapon battle, so essentially everywhere but most obvious plot point in the entire game.

Majora's Mask has since shown the kind of tension that comes with a timer constantly counting down to a cataclysmic impact. The Moon is rarely a serious threat, but having it hang overhead, and knowing that it will fall, is intimidating. It's the proper feeling to have when a villain is summoning a giant celestial body to destroy all life on the planet.

Something to this effect could also be done for the Diamond Weapon battle as well: Having to fly along side the lumbering giant and whittle its HP down before it reaches Midgar would be a much more impressive fight than previously allowable.

5) Bring back the Gambit System

The gambit system is one of the most underrated gems to ever come from a Final Fantasy game.

Fans either love it or they're wrong. With party based combat, in games that aren't turn based, the Gambit System is an absolute must have. You can't actively control all of your party members at the same time, so the next best thing is to write a script based on how you would react in a given situation. That's what the Gambit System is: Dumbed down AI scripting.

When it was introduced in Final Fantasy 12, many would go on to talk about how they hated the game playing itself. Piss off, like you were so completely invested in the traditional JRPG standby of holding the confirm button to slaughter wave after wave of fodder mobs?

Gambits could automate combat, but it didn't really matter because either way you were calling the shots. What's the difference between telling a computer to attack by programming it to do as you say, and telling a computer to attack by mashing the X button? One's faster and the other is for people that aren't sharp enough to use the faster option.
 

Change is coming, even if we don't want it. Since that's the case, we might as well look at some changes that would be welcome in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. It's more positive than focusing on the fact that the company behind the latest Final Fantasy 15 debacle is rolling up its sleeves to do a hack job on one history's greatest video games.

I'd cry too if my son's destiny was to be trapped in development hell.

I'm sill bitter and faithless, but I recognize that Square Enix has some greatness left in the tank. After all, some of the items on this list were directly inspired by work they've done in the past decade. They make great games when they aren't trying design engines that cost large amounts of money and cripple their latest AAA projects. (Looking at you Crystal Tools and Luminous Studio engines.)

Let's jump right in with a somewhat controversial pick…