I've been playing all of the non-FF12's on Active so long I can't do Wait anymore because of the action bar stoppages during spells. It brings boss battles to a crawling halt, and adds another layer of difficulty to the fight by making powerful spells with lengthy animations have an actual downside. This is a big concern in FF6 where spells like Ice 3 and Pearl have the exact same incantation time as a Level 1 spell, but have obscene animation times that you can use to your advantage / disadvantage on Active. Furthermore, I can't possibly imagine the sluggishness of fighting battle after battle with Mog dual wielding Pearl Lances and having to wait through a double cast of that shit (multiply this by about 36 for FF7 with that Neo Bahamut shit, and FF8's button mashing GF garbage). The *only* time Attack spam would ever be "more efficient" than casting a spell is if you have 2 or more characters' bars queued up at the same time and need to minimize scroll time. But, when you consider animation times of spells it becomes mostly insignificant because of the inevitable action queue that builds up. I'll give you a point that Active completely shits on Cyan's SwdTech, and manages to make it absolutely worthless. But, SwdTech already sucks to start. I've always felt if you can't pick out Edgar's Drill, or input BumRush in a quick time (since they're the best characters in the game) that's all on you.
Acknowledged most of this quote.
I forgot about the wait during animations. I'd argue that it's the anims themselves that by far grind things to a halt, much more so than the gauges pausing during, then waiting to refill after. Even with battle speed set to slowest they don't take particularly long to fill. Exception for FF9 where the battle speed drives me a bit nuts as you can't alter it, nor manually optimise the speed stat much.
Also good point on spells with lengthy anims sometimes being advantageous with active enabled. There is an upside to having to scroll through damn list menus at a brisk pace (this is the thing that annoys me most with active).
Has there ever been an ATB-based Final Fantasy that hasn't had the 'Memory' option for your Cursor?
Memory only applies to the last action taken...not applicable in many cases.
Also the vid was merely to highlight the extreme difficulty of that mod. tbh though I did warn of the grindyness of requiem and did recommend it before, I'm not sure if I can recommend it in hindsight. It fixes a number of things, and does demand more strategy which is much appreciated, yet at the same time it encourages so much GF spam, emulator save state spam, makes things more grindy than they need to be, and late stage bosses are a joke in how much HP they have. I'd probably still say go ahead because the game is just too easy vanilla, and the mod absolutely does have its merits, just expect some ultra grindyness, and probably give up just before the end boss fight like I did (I didn't even bother attempting it. It takes TWO HOURS to beat. That's just boring grindyness). FF7 hardtype mod though, gud, near flawless shit. The FF9 hardcore mod made by the same dude that did requiem was also a lot better; much less insane.
One more thing, maybe it is possible to beat requiem in active, but you'd sure have to be a list-navigating GOD. Enemies really don't fuck around.
I guess I am non-hardcore FF player, lel. I definitely know a lot less of the ins and out of the games than some people anyways, yet casuals don't play hardcore hacks so I guess I'm hardcore leaning but not quite there. Not that I want to be either. I like the gameplay and story but I consider neither 10/10 in any (exception maybe for FF9's story, as a story aimed at adolescents), though the music and art is always top tier stufff.