I don’t think I’d ever audibly yelled at my TV screen during a video game prior to playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but one particular section and design choice had me actively cussing out the actually-wonderful development team at Square Enix during my first playthrough. And no, it wasn’t Cactuar Crush, though it came close.
Instead, it’s a moment that I felt a huge amount of vindication in discovering that other players had experienced in just the same way as I did while playing the game before its public release back in February. It’s a moment right at the end of the game, and one you may not even come across if you’re going in adequately prepared (again, harder to do pre-release). The moment, dear reader, is the one where upon dying in any of the different stages of the game’s final boss battle results in one of the most confusingly-worded “retry” menus that I’ve ever come across.
In case you’re yet to see it – and you seemingly won’t any longer – the menu that appeared if players fell in battle during this (or most other multi-phase) series of fights read thusly:
- Retry from Before Current Battle
- Retry from This Battle
- Retry from Before Battle
- Resume
Can you guess which one of these options is the one that lets you restart from the phase of the battle you were just in when you died and the menu popped up? Because if you said “Retry from This Battle” you would be wrong. That’s the one that sends you right back to the beginning. In the case of the potentially hour-plus-long final boss sequence, that’s a mistake that far too many of us made.
Now, as of update 1.030 for the game (which also fixes its bugged mini-games trophy for those that were having issues nabbing the platinum trophy), the wording for these has been slightly altered to the below:
- Retry from Current Phase
- Retry from This Battle
- Retry from Before Battle
- Resume
Image: u/Solodin
It’s still not perfect, as the confusing “This Battle” remains, but it at least properly signposts the option most people would want to be going for which is to continue the fight from the phase they died in. It could be better, and as some users on Reddit have pointed out a simple notice of how many minutes of gameplay each option will set you back would improve this even further, but it’s nice to see that Square Enix heard players’ pained cries (and words I can’t repeat here).
