I meant to write up how 89 hours with FF7 Rebirth using the Playstation Access Controller went. Many of the same issues in Infinite Wealth come up again here.
There are various dpad and analogue stick inconsistencies throughout which mean I have to use a DS5 controller for most menu navigation. Sometimes you can use both stick and pad, sometimes the game only accepts the dpad. Dpads are notoriously annoying to rebind with accessibility hardware because they are technically 4 separate inputs but closely related in function. The best solution would just be to let the game accept left analog input, I ain’t wasting four slots to make some scrapheap dpad.
Camera realignment is needed frequently but using a second analog stick alongside the PAC gets awkward after a while given how much you need to hotswap controllers. Luckily Rebirth has an auto-align camera which lowered the need to have to quickly tweak right analog.
The number of minigames in Rebirth puts the PAC to the test. It’s like Mario Party but the control schemes are more complex and have no common spine. R2 is accelerate in some minigames/vehicle controls, in others it’s X, there’s sometimes a boost activated by maybe R3 or R2 or L1 or X.
I had to switch to a regular DS5 controller entirely for several minigames, I’m not sure how you would do them otherwise:
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Piano rhythm game cannot be done on PAC because of the dual analog requirement, precision required, and it is too awkward to use the PAC’s left and the DS5’s right analogue stick simultaneously (the game is built for thumbs, stick direction is not forgiving)
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Polygon Fighter is like very basic Punch-Out but you can only use dual-analog (reaction time dependent, frustrated by having hands spread over a less familiar control scheme, and the stick direction need to be quick + accurate)
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Red XIII Football (One of the rare times in the game where camera control correction is needed constantly and isn’t helped as much by the auto-align function)
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Tifa Situps (extremely tight timing requirement, You could actually lay this out on a PAC to be easier than a DS5 in theory but it’s annoying to do just for one minigame)
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The bike minigame is just ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Square is left attack, circle is right attack. You have to hold R2 to accelerate and keep up, X is boost. You have 7 buttons and left analog, all of which are needed in rapid combination with quick reactions. Unplayable on PAC, barely playable (for me) on DS5.
I guess allowing the player to remap/partially automate every minigame’s controls might be a lot but would it? They let you opt out of motion controls in some instances but reliance on sticks and inconsistent function-button pairings are just annoying. In the above cases I think it’s just because the game basically requires intense precision with sticks.
A lot of menus and minigames use the left-right logic for navigation (scrolling with L2 R2; L1 R1) which makes sense but the PAC’s circular shape kinda pushes you toward comfort rather than logical left-right alignment of buttons.
This also confuses Synergy attacks (hold R1 [guard] and attack) and Ability Shortcuts (hold L1 and attack) in combat. I think this was confusing right up until the endgame partially because there are too many hold functions in combat but also because the muscle memory is fighting my brain’s inherent sense of direction.
Requiring R3 to lock-on, and there being no option to have auto-lock on on battle start(!), had me seriously considering a space on the PAC for R3 despite it being mostly useless elsewhere. I might start experimenting with the attachment slots if I need more buttons quickly. A game I might play soon is the Dead Space Remake which lets you do this for inputting cardinal directions on an analog stick so you can just hold a button to move forward, and a recent Special Effect video recommends it being an attachment extension. If it works, I might be able to complete a game where you aim and shoot in 3d throughout the game, something I haven’t really done since The Last of Us 2 (though back then I had to take a break every 20 minutes).