Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
You need to remember that this boss fight is effectively a tutorial, tutorial bosses always take longer and have more going on. I don't expect every single battle to have scenes like that where they walk you through the process of finding a weakness and exploiting it. Also, fights always seem faster when you're actually involved in them, at least in my experience. Your mind is going through processes instead of just sitting there watching.

Regardless, I'm not against long boss fights so long as they are engaging and satisfying. There are games where you spend considerably longer than what we saw in that video when facing a boss and I don't see why FF can't be amongst those if they play it out right.
My concern really stems from the issue that I was actually getting a little bored after awhile as the battle went on, and the more concerning factor that the video is obviously edited down for the sake of time with noticeable cuts. Even as a tutorial/first epic boss fight, dragging this fight out to a ten minute mark feels a bit concerning for me. I mean it looks like Cloud and Barret are doing comparable damage to their PS1 counterparts, but Guard Scorpion seem to have the health pool of a boss from second disc of the original. I'm all for the tactical changes like the new defensive mode, its ability to move out of range forcing you to use Barret and magic to strike, and cover mechanics for the Tail attack; but the video gave the impression their might be a lot of "rinse and repeat" elements at play here. Looking at the rest of the trailer, I feel like the Guard Buster boss seems to have a few cinematic style shenanigans going on as well. This is all well and good for a first time fight many fans feel is one of the game's most memorable, but if every boss fight is going to be like this, then I feel its going to kill some of the pacing. VII was always one of the faster battle systems, so having it start taking cues from Kingdom Heart's more self-indulgent cinematic fights seems a bit concerning.