Spells and Items

What did y'all think about the implementation of the spells and items in this remake?

I usually just use healing items in every Final Fantasy, but this was the first where I messed around a bit. I found that Grenades, Fuzzy Wuzzies, and the other stuffed animal bombs are the best ways to take down the Shinra guards with shields. It'll knock the whole group down letting you attack them freely. Of course you can also use a Fire spell, but that's not as fun to me.
I also used the molotov cocktails too for enemies weak to fire for my party members who weren't Cloud. In general this game is harder than the original so I was definitely using more healing items than usual. I've never used so many potions before in my life. The only other time where I was so careful with my spell and item usage was in the post game in XII.

About the spells I do like how the black magic spells have an area of effect so if enemies are really close to each other you can still hit multiple targets without the Magnify materia. It annoys just a little bit that they kept the old names for some of these spells, but not all of them. All of the black magic spells are with their updated names, but Barrier and Manaward should be Protect and Shell. I can't remember what Manawall is supposed to do, but I suspect it's Reflect. There's also Raise and Arise which I think were only in the Ivalice games. I feel like this was still Life and Full-Life in VII. Anyway it's weird because they have Auto-Life.

Maybe this is only unique to Kingdom Hearts but I thought Mega-Potions were supposed to restore 1000 HP to your whole party.

I think it;s a little too dependent on healing items. I don't mind the game being harder than the OG but sometimes it felt like every other command was some kind of healing item. Got a bit boring some times.

I kinda got excited when I saw a "new" materia, only to find it's one I'm already familiar with. I guess it can't be called All when it isn't necessarily used against all targets, but magnify seems like the wrong name for it.

I often felt like item use should be half an ATB or something because it can get frustrating but I guess the game would be broken if you could just spam item use.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mercen-X

I think Magnify does hit all enemied, just there are some situations where more enemies appear quickly after a few have been wiped out. I hate that enemies can essily dodge Blizzard and Aero spells. On my first playthrough, I think I used a grenade once, and it was avoided, so I stopped using offensive items until Chapter Select when I felt free to mess around. Gravity Orb and Spider-Web are both basically useless, IMO.

---

It is very easy for the aerial enemies to dodge Blizzard and Aero and there's a problem with that since all aerial enemies are weak to wind.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Depression Moon

but Barrier and Manaward should be Protect and Shell. I can't remember what Manawall is supposed to do, but I suspect it's Reflect.

---

Manawall was just the first 2 combined. It was exactly the same in the original game. In the original it was Barrier->MBarrier->Reflect->Wall (Barrier+MBarrier).

In Remake it just skipped Reflect. Manawall=Barrier+Manaward